"The Secret Life of Words" (2005) - Movie Review

In the deep surface of tragedy over the air, “The Secret Life of Words” begins to follow the cliché independent movies have acquired. Yet the sorrow in the poetry of it touches some where. Mostly because of Sarah Polley in her childish faces with pain beyond those soft and tender layers of hidden skins. And supported always ever in an effortless but a character in presence is Tim Robbins. It has voiceovers, calmness, and serenity with obvious but artful silences which in its subtle indulgence creates an emotional suspense when unraveled comes out as the sentences under the lips unuttered and swallowed within.

Like a branded drama film we see Sarah Polley’s Hanna does a clock work in a factory. Her deafness is understood when she is the only employee not taking a noise reducing headphones. Her solitude and adherence to routine is through her sitting alone in cafeteria eating rice and chicken for lunch while the same as dinner aloof in her house. So much have the films of drama fell through the paths of stereotypic that the character of Hanna are seen as a character seen sufficient number of occasions. She is asked to take a month vacation by her boss in order to give a break to her and to other workers who seem to think of her as non-social person. Of course she is and the reason for her state will obviously be revealed by the end of the film.

There is a child’s voice narrating about her or Hanna through broken sentences cryptic and remotely having a dying feeling in it. She overhears an employee (Eddie Marson) while lunching in a restaurant that a person injured in an oil rig fire needs a nurse. She volunteers and along with several other men she takes care of a funny, flirty and deeply talkative Josef (Tim Robbins). He has temporarily lost his sight and Hanna is joked around, flirted around and some times deeply touched to see a life out of the ordinary through Josef.

There are long talks and awkward discussions ending without an end. The location and the origin of the each character remains a mystery and as Hanna keep her identity a shade for Josef. Director Isabel Coixet chooses an odd location with people we can guess about. Simon (Javier Cámara) the chef with high connoisseur for cuisine, a lonely old man Dimitri (Sverre Ousdal), a young oceanographer Martin (Daniel Mays), Liam (Dean Lennox Kelly), Scott (Danny Cunningham) and a goose. All of these men except the goose (which has a deepening surreal sensation) but including Josef are tilted in their balance with a female entity in the isolated place engulfed by the enormous sea water. But they are subtle with shyness and possess withdrawing symptoms. Even before these men she temporarily meets the Doctor (Steven Mackintosh) who attends Josef. He too wants to leave an impression over this recluse woman only to be gloomed by her reply of calm rage.

We see Hanna as a deeply disconnected and hurt person. Her connectivity has become invisible and hopeless. There is a cessation and repression of the anger, hatred and unbearable sorrow beneath her sunken face. And not much does it take her to mingle with the crew. The socializing capabilities look magnified and slightly exaggerated without any reason and it appeals to us so because when we met Hanna, she was a hard nut not to break but to have a microscopic pore to breathe some life.

Whom she ends up is rhetorical question but how she ends up is “The Secret Life of Words”. Julie Christie in a guest role of one who explains the actual tragic beyond Hanna’s and many others appeared secluded from the film. While the tragic and truth of it is not questioned, it was disjointed and in a sad way emotionless about the tragedy she explains.

Tim Robbins in his casual and smooth voice handles Josef as the man who could get into a bar and make friends in no time. The sexual remarks and the flirtation he makes are not crass or sugary rather an unguarded personality with chances as his life and impulse as his tool to access people. And the very much of those is needed for Polley’s Hanna. In “Go” Polley was an active young girl letting the night take control of her and in the blasé “The Weight of Water”, she was a house wife of deepest secrets and agony. And the later very much coincides with Hanna, may be because both are depressed and living in a life they do not want to lead on. One gets into the endless beauty of Sarah Polley which is unusual, inviting and has a mysticism of giving everything and in a silent rejection there is a pleasure but it is the performance which gives those.