Review: In The Silence of Others, Trauma Is Turned Into Change

Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar’s documentary is monumental for its clamorous sounding of an alarm.

The Silence of Others
Photo: Argot Pictures

Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar’s The Silence of Others tells us much about the history of Spain in the last 100 years, beginning with how the Spanish Civil War was capped by decades of dictatorship under Francisco Franco defined by torture and murder. It was an era that came to a close with the quick introduction of an amnesty law intended to forgive those involved—both the torturers and the tortured. Most importantly, though, we learn about a universal jurisdiction doctrine that allows other countries—even ones still processing their own histories of dictatorship—to investigate Franco-era crimes. Argentina takes an active role in the belated attempts at some sort of closure, if not justice, as hundreds of Spanish plaintiffs, relatives of some of the Franco regime’s “disappeared” victims, try to get rapists, kidnappers, and murderers extradited to Buenos Aires.

The Silence of Others offers footage of present-day “Hail Spain!” and “Make Spain Great Again!” rallies, inevitably inviting us to contemplate the chronic bouts of fascism that are presently afflicting so many parts of the world. Throughout, Carracedo and Bahar present to us history in its crudest form: an all-too-predicable loop, a childish insistence. Their film, though, takes a much more traditional approach than some other recent documentaries that have grappled with the toxic inheritance of dictatorships, like Patricio Guzmán’s The Pearl Button and Susana de Sousa Dias’s Obscure Light, as The Silence of Others doesn’t display the self-reflective poetics of the former or the formal radicalism of the latter.

Instead, we’re offered the expected bits of archival footage and on-camera testimonials, which alternate with the developments of the court case, as an Argentinian judge tries to get Spain to extradite the Franco-era criminals or, at least, force them to testify. In the process, Carracedo and Bahar sometimes waste opportunities for contemplation, as when they follow a man going back to the place where he was jailed and tortured at the age of 24 for “illicit association and illegal propaganda.” The sequence feels slightly awkward in its brevity—a parenthetical portrait of the personal in the midst of such a complex socio-political puzzle.

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The Silence of Others is, in any case, monumental for its clamorous sounding of an alarm. It reminds us, and we do need reminding, that the acts of horror committed by nation states are often followed by a convenient amnesia—a whitewashing of man’s brutality—where everyone agrees to be good citizens moving forward. But beyond its pedagogical function, the film helps us posit more philosophical questions of justice versus revenge, along with the endless transmission of trauma. From generation to generation, the ravages of Spain’s dictatorship are passed on like a cursed heirloom. The sadism of yesterday’s jackals becomes palpable through the accounts of their deeds, but their victims’ progeny, now close to death themselves, have rather modest wishes. Namely, getting official confirmation that their loved ones were murdered by the state. Or seeing what’s left of the bodies, even if from a distance.

At one point in the film, we meet an old woman fighting not so much for the uncovering of the truth about her mother’s murder, but for her remains. The state promises she can get the remains “once pigs fly.” The woman has other promises to hold dear, such as the one she made to her own father about one day recovering her mother’s body, even if indeed it took the flying of pigs for such a feat to occur. Another elderly woman we encounter has made it her life mission to see her father one more time. A rotting skull will do—any chunk of matter to give undeniable status to the pain of not knowing, not seeing, not being believed.

It’s evidence the Spanish government tries to keep buried at all costs. And oh, how quickly the state’s version of history crumbles when its artifacts are unearthed from underground. As when one of the elderly women, in the film’s most memorable scene, watches as men finally dig deep into the earth, opening her father’s tomb and discovering hard evidence of a life of inherited trauma. How quickly an 88-year-old woman becomes a child when faced with the irrefutable proof that indeed the father was real, and thus their bond, and thus their love.

Score: 
 Director: Almudena Carracedo, Robert Bahar  Distributor: Argot Pictures  Running Time: 96 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2018

Diego Semerene

Diego Semerene is an assistant professor of queer and transgender media at the University of Amsterdam.

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