Review of A Minute's Silence

"Schweigeminute" is a German/Danish co-production from 2016, so still a relatively new and fresh movie. This is in the German language and pretty short actually, only runs for 80 minutes roughly without credits. The director is Thorsten Schmidt and he is also one of several people who adapted the original work by Siegfried Lenz. It is a small screen release and the story of a young man who falls in love with his (considerably older) English teacher. As the film is set several decades in the past, this is an even bigger taboo than it would be today. But there are more aspects in here other than society and what they are thinking. It is also about the professional lives of the two and the boy's career prospects for example. In addition we get a couple scenes too in which we witness how the two get closer. For me, it was a pretty close decision as well if I'd give this one two or three stars out of five as honestly eventually nothing really stands out and there are moments in here where the film goes for cheap thrills that never work well in a film's favor. And it also sounds pretentious as well at times. However, it seems that Lenz' base material (especially the tragic twist towards the end that makes the film much more than a love story) is good enough here to make the film work as a whole and I also think they did mostly a good job with all the water references who really add a lot to the general tone and atmosphere I guess. Besides, I have liked Koschitz for a long time and Nay is also one of the German actors from his generation that I prefer over most other. So lets be generous and give this film a thumbs-up. It's nothing groundbreaking, but a pretty decent watch for slightly under 1.5 hours. Go check it out.