Some movies will forever change the way you look at plants.
Unsurprisingly, many of them are thrillers and science-fiction films, like Little Shop of Horrors, The Day of the Triffids, or, more recently, the mind-controlling flower freakout Little Joe. You could probably make a more sinister version of the new drama Silent Friend, which dares to suggest that the tree outside your door or the geranium on your windowsill might be studying you intently — and might even reach out, if it could, and tell you what it's thinking.
But the Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi isn't interested in scaring us. She wants us to leave this movie feeling more connected to the natural world.
Silent Friend tells three separate stories, all set in different periods across more than a century, but rooted in the same location: the University of Marburg in Germany. First, we meet a neuroscientist named Tony, played by the Hong Kong star Tony Leung Chiu-wai, who's visiting the school as a guest researcher.
It's 2020, and when COVID-19 hits, Tony is left stranded on a near-empty campus. Bored and lonely, he stumbles on some online videos featuring a French botanist, Alice, played by Léa Seydoux, and is captivated by her theory that plants have a highly developed consciousness. Inspired, Tony plans an experiment and gets in touch with Alice via Zoom to ask for her guidance.
Tony's experiment involves attaching electronic sensors to the leaves and trunk of a nearly 200-year-old ginkgo biloba tree and studying the resulting data to see what, if anything, the plant might be trying to communicate. In a way, this tree is the true protagonist of Silent Friend; it's the only character old enough to appear in all three time frames.
In the earliest story, set in 1908, an aspiring botanist named Grete, played by Luna Wedler, becomes the first female student admitted to the university. As she pursues her studies, she trains to become a photographer and develops a deeper aesthetic appreciation of the flowers, fruits and vegetables that she often finds herself shooting.
The third story is set in 1972: A young man named Hannes, played by Enzo Brumm, is tasked with looking after his roommate's prized geranium. In a primitive early version of Tony's 2020 experiment, Hannes finds himself studying and decoding the flower's responses to stimuli.
The film cuts vigorously among these three stories, wrapping them around each other like vines. There's no danger of getting lost, though, since each era has its own distinct visual style: black-and-white film for the early 20th century; warm, grainy color film for the '70s; and cool, high-def digital for 2020. Every era, Enyedi seems to be saying, has its own technological advancements.
Every era also has its own political pressures: In all three stories, the university is a place where human progress is both nurtured and threatened. Tony has to deal with pandemic isolation and paranoid campus staff. Grete must endure the profound condescension of her all-male professors and peers. And Hannes finds that even the let-it-all-hang-out spirit of the '70s, can be unexpectedly stifling.
Enyedi loves telling tales about misfits and underdogs, and infuses them with a magical sense of possibility. In 2017, she directed the Oscar-nominated romance On Body and Soul, about two slaughterhouse workers who start seeing each other in their dreams. Now, in Silent Friend, she gives us three distinct characters, all outsiders in one way or another, and all of whom use science to push beyond what can be strictly observed.
As wonderful as her three human leads are — especially Leung, who's as mesmerizing as ever in his first big European production — the filmmaker encourages us to consider a plant's point of view. She sometimes frames the actors from high above, as if the camera were perched on a branch over their heads. In one scene, Grete enjoys a cigarette break under the ginkgo biloba tree, and we see close-ups of a leaf withering on contact with the smoke.
It takes patience to see things from this perspective, to appreciate the vulnerability and beauty of a germinating seed, a budding flower, or a head of broccoli. If you let it, Silent Friend will gently open your eyes to that beauty.
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