What is the movie "Silent Witness" about?

Silent testimony is hard to argue with.

Let’s first talk about the genre. "Silent Witness" is a standard, textbook suspense thriller. The first half of it is mainly thriller, and the second half gradually transitions to a suspenseful tone. The film eliminates unnecessary redundant parts and takes the lead from the beginning with the "murderer's perspective". As a result, the audience was deceived. It turned out that it was not a murder but a filming. It can be said that from the beginning, the director persisted and consistently misled the audience, giving them wrong expectations, namely: surprise. "Surprise is the result of wrong expectations" - "Film Art Form and Style"

The story development of the movie always runs through this "wrong expectation". But that's not all. The reason why this movie has become a classic of suspense thrillers is because it has almost all the classic techniques of commercial suspense thrillers. Let’s analyze this movie from 4 perspectives.

1. Soundtrack: Its soundtrack perfectly fits the rhythm of the movie's story. It is either sharp, low or heavy, closely following the development of the rhythm, delicate and smooth. If you are interested while watching the movie, you can pay special attention to the connection process between the soundtrack and the plot.

2. Shot: Its editing is smooth and smooth, and the narrative shot is not too fancy, but it is not procrastinating or lengthy at all. Using the standard narrative lens techniques of the 1990s, the director and cinematographer used the control of the camera to subtly create a sense of horror. It is really impressive and striving for excellence. The director and photographer use the depth of field, lens control, exquisite scene scheduling, and switching of perspectives to keep the audience in a sense of horror and crisis.

3. Narrative: Its narrative structure starts with horror and gradually transitions to a suspenseful tone. The film always keeps the audience's emotions in a highly tense state, and the whole story is always full of strong suspense. The smell does not make the audience guess the ending too early, nor does it make the audience lose their sense of immersion through unreasonable nonsense. The script is really a sophisticated work that can stand the test of time. The result of a director controlling audience expectations may be that the audience is deceived. Here, the director repeatedly misleads the audience in order to create uncertain expectations, and always controls the plot in an ambiguous development process to create an effect that confuses and guesses the audience. To put it simply: "Surprise is the result of wrong expectations" - "Film Art Form and Style".

4. Theme: "Silent Testimony". I think its main theme also has an extended meaning: silent testimony is hard to argue with.

The characters in the film can be said to have collectively suffered from aphasia. Under such circumstances, a group of Americans came to film in Russia, where they didn't understand the language. This in itself was a kind of "environmental aphasia." In the movie, due to various internal and external communication barriers and communication contradictions, all the characters in the movie became dumb and unable to express their true wishes. As a result, they constantly generated misunderstandings and found themselves in crisis: being The tied up bad guy pouted and was taken into a bomb-laden vehicle by the old policeman, who could only express his pain and worry; the mute girl who called for help could only use a computer artificial voice to translate slowly, causing a communication barrier with the operator; the director and his wife The old neighbor who faced the mute girl downstairs with a gun was misunderstood as the murderer. He couldn't explain why. As the saying goes, silent testimony makes it difficult to defend with words.