Movie Review: 'Voice of Silence' (2020)
This film is included in the list of nominees for the 57th Baeksang Arts Awards
Korean Title: 소리도 없이
English Title: Voice of Silence
Running Time: 1 hour, 31 minutes
Release Date: October 15, 2020
Genre: Crime
Language(s): Korean
Cast: Yoo Ah In (#Alive), Yoo Jae Myung (Itaewon Class)
Directed by: Hong Ui Jeong
Written by: Hong Ui Jeong
Voice of Silence is a crime indie-film about duo Tae In (Yoo Ah In) and Chang Bok (Yoo Jae Myung) who make ends meet by selling egg sandwiches by day and cleaning up crime scenes for gangs as a side-hustle. During one of their assignments, they become entangled with 11-year-old girl, Cho Hee (Moon Seung Ah) and get stuck taking responsibility for her.
The character Yoo Ah In plays, Tae In, struggles to speak as a result of an undisclosed condition. As such, Yoo Ah In does not have a single line in this film. Voice of Silence is Hong Ui Jeong’s debut feature film and it is nominated for multiple awards at the upcoming 57th Baeksang Arts Awards taking place on May 13, 2021 - it is nominated under the following categories:
Best Film
Best Actor - Yoo Ah In as Tae In
Best Supporting Actor - Yoo Jae Myung as Chang Bok
Best Director - Hong Ui Jeong
Best Screenplay for Film - Hong Ui Jeong
Best New Director - Hong Ui Jeong
Story
Tae In (Yoo Ah In) is unable to speak due to a condition and works with Chang Bok (Yoo Jae Myung) for organized crime groups. They maintain a warehouse used by gangs to torture and kill enemies from opposing groups. After any particular crime is done, Tae In and Chang Bok come in to complete clean up duties, including the disposal of dead bodies, ensuring all traces and evidence pointing to the crime is removed - and they are rather good at it.
They get recommended to complete a quick job involving kidnapping a person and keeping them for 24 hours before they get picked up for ransom. Although it is outside of their regular scope of work, Tae In and Chang Bok end up accepting the job for extra money. To their surprise, the person they’re kidnapping is an 11-year-old girl named Cho Hee (Moon Seung Ah).
Having no intention to get involved in a child kidnapping case, Chang Bok and Tae In rationalize the crime with the thought that Cho Hee will be picked up in less than 24 hours and they can just treat her as though she’s just hanging out with them and not really a kidnapping victim. However, what started as 24 hours end up becoming longer after Cho Hee’s Dad decides to negotiate for her ransom instead of picking her up. Things get even messier after the boss who recommended them to the job gets killed - it turns out, he ordered Cho Hee’s kidnapping outside of the big boss’ awareness.
Since Tae In doesn’t speak and lives in the outskirts, Chang Bok decides that Cho Hee staying with Tae In would be the best thing to do while he found a way to collect the money from the gang. Although Tae In was initially against the idea due to his terrible living conditions, Chang Bok ultimately able to convinces him to take Cho Hee to his home. Cho Hee cooperates with the thought that her Dad will eventually pick her up after the ransom money is settled - along the way, she forges a bond between Tae In and his sister, Moon Ju (Lee Ga Eun).
The Verdict
Overall Rating: 7/10
Our main character Tae In is the obvious symbol of silence wherein the viewers learn he’s unable to speak due to an undisclosed throat condition. Chang Bok, his partner who is quite religious, records tapes of religious leaders and asks Tae In to listen to them in hopes that praying over his condition will bring healing and eventually help him to speak.
As I mentioned earlier, Tae In has no real lines in this whole film - he communicates with the viewers in the form of small sounds and body language alone. (Which, on a side note: I want to highlight how well Yoo Ah In did portraying a character like Tae In. I can imagine that it would be easy but quite difficult to portray someone who doesn’t say anything at all!) Given he’s able to make sounds, in the beginning, I thought that he’s eventually going to be able to speak as his character progresses, but he actually never ends up being able to do so. Which made a lot of sense in portraying the real world realistically - the effects of oppression tend to compound on top of itself until the people affected by it are buried beneath it whole.
On the flip side, we have Cho Hee, who on the surface level is actually quite sociable and charming - she was able to reach out and integrate herself into Tae In and Moon Ju’s way of life using her words. However, Cho Hee ends up speaking less and less as her character gets suppressed further. Cho Hee’s character goes through many diminishing scenarios that make her feel unwanted and not valuable: from her father negotiating to lower her ransom, to ultimately not getting picked up (she believes it’s because she’s a daughter and not a son), to getting sold to child traffickers, up to same child traffickers negotiating to lower her value in price because she’s “older than expected”.
Although it does take a little bit of thinking after the movie to understand its message, Voice of Silence demonstrates the dangers of silencing others as well how it affects the quality of their lives in comparison to people who have a voice. The Korean title of this film, 소리도 없이 (sorido eobshi) can also be contextualized into English as “leaving no trace/evidence”. Wherein the concept of leaving no trace is shown through Tae In and Chang Bok’s side hustle but more importantly, when applied to the actual lives of the characters involved, we learn that the act of “silencing” individuals - whether its obvious (like Tae In) or not (like Cho Hee) can lead to the abrupt or gradual disappearance of one’s individuality and identity as a whole.
