The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that “if a lion could speak, we couldn’t understand him.” That our references and experiences in the world is so different that even a shared language could not let people communicate with an animal.
In Ildikó Enayedis’Silent friend“Communication between plants and humans is far beyond words, but it is perhaps possible to get in touch with them more in -depth than we previously assumed. Her film has never been satisfied with surfaces, instead prefers to peer during everyday life
Never a filmmaking content with surfaces, her enyedia has always been about looking during everyday life and finding something curious. Her Golden Bear winner 2017 ”On body and soul“Married tenderness with surrealism in a love toileRy walked around, of all places, a slaughterhouse, while “the story of my wife” wrestled with love that flourished by the first unclear indifference. Her latest, “Silent Friend”, as the premiere in the competition at Venice 2025 Before moving on to Toronto, this fascination expands for the invisible – this time, through the unlikely vantage point for a Ginkgo tree.
The prerequisite is fraudulently simple. A single tree in a German university city serves as a silent witness to a century of human longing. The film is structured as a triptych: 1908 discovers Grete (Luna Wedler), the school’s first female student faces near constant misogyny, the universal life patterns hidden in plants through her black and white photography. In 1972, Hannes (Enzo Brumm), a common farm boy in a hedonistic haze of hormones and counterculture, stumbles upon a revelation through his contact with a love interest Geranium. And in 2020, Tony Leung Tony, a Hong Kong Neuroscientist who specializes in infants who, under the executed silence of the Covid Lockdown, plays experiments in a new field of botany that can force community with Ginkgo himself.
It is a bold structure, and Enyedi makes it even more distinct by shooting each ERA in a carefully composed style: 35-millimeter monochrome for Grete’s rigid organized world, lush 16mm for Hannes Impressionist Dis and sharp digital clarity for Tony’s loneliness. This tripartite structure gives “Silent Friend” a rigority that makes Time itself another character. The giant ginkgo does not change much, but everything around it does, and Enyedi seems determined to show us how fragile and culturally contingent our idea of reality really is.
But for all its conceptual wealth, “Silent Friend” is also a movie that is prone to abandon. Enayedi has often made meditative film, but here her restraint in some sequences is bordered during choking. Whole passages seem satisfied to let us look at the leaf rattle, characters remain or silence extends far beyond narrative necessity. She clearly wants us to sink into the slow “tree time”, but there is a thin line between contemplative and inert. After 147 minutes, the film sometimes crosses it and sits in rhythms more punitive than deep.
What constantly saves it – and this is hardly a surprise – is Tony Leung. At this point in his career, Leung needs to prove anything, but he proves everything anyway. Enyedi reportedly wrote the role specifically for him, and it shows. This is less a performance than a presence: a study in silence, longing and grace. With barely a handful of lines, which roam the pandemic excellent university halls, Leung communicates. How he leans on his head, looks at the only passerby he is likely to see that day through a cafeteria window, or simply sharing screens with a tree bears a truly heartbreaking depiction of loneliness.
Few artists embodies the old school’s charisma of international art bio as he likes him. He is reminiscent of the distant elegance of Alain Delon or the masculine grace of Marcello Mastroianni, but with a warmth and melancholy that is unique his. “Silent friend” can revolve around a tree, but it is Leung who convinces you that the tree is worth investigating.
The supporting role makes its mark, if less indelible. Luna Wedler makes Grete a formidable and hard-intelligent character, especially in a sharp-front confrontation against a panel with a naughty professors who want to reduce and humiliate her; Her black and white sequences, inspired by the photograph of Karl Blossfeldt, are also the most striking in the film. Enzo Brumm captures in its first major role the troublesome, liquid energy from a youthful uncertainty and first love. And Léa Seydoux, in a short but potent turn as a researcher of plant communication that is at a distance mentors Tony is magnetic as always. She and Leung’s contact are virtual, but Seydoux’s charisma is strong enough to bridge the gap and give the couple a sore chemistry.
There is a convincing change in power dynamics during the 112 years that the film covers, where women are only valued for their chastity, just to become subversive, sexually authorized researchers who perform groundbreaking experiments or deliver TED calls and mentors at other researchers at the top of their game.
No matter how much Seydoux sparkles or Wedler Steadies, this is Leung’s movie. Ginkgo can be the titular “silent friend”, but the most moving silence belongs to him. His performance transforms the film from an intellectual exercise into a work with genuine feeling. Without him, “silent friend” would risk being remembered as a handsome, cerebral curio. With him, there is something more: a haunting meditation that remains in the mind even when the stimulation tests one’s patience.
Enayedi’s direction remains admirable for its ambition and draws inspiration from Thomas Nagel’s famous essay “What is it like to be a bat?” And neuroscientist Anil Seth’s work with consciousness, frames human life as a shared hallucination that nature silently resists. But whether these ideas reason will largely depend on one’s tolerance for the muted.
In the end, “Silent Friend” is a movie of contradictions, deep, complex and beautiful, but sometimes infinitely boring. Tony Leung still commands the screen with such a gesture economy, such magnetic silence, such a pure star power. And even though it will hopefully live for another 112 years, inheritance will have his power to extend further.
Rating: B.
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