In the Uzbek drama 40 Days of Silence, a teenage Tajik girl undertakes a ritual vow of silence for forty days. The mystery for a non-Tajik or -Uzbek audience is why she would do this? And, we wonder, what is going to happen?
These questions are not answered definitively in 40 Days of Silence, but we sense that the stakes are life and death. The girl’s progress is related dreamily, and it’s not always clear what is happening – or whether it is really happening.
The most outstanding aspect of 40 Days of Silence is its sound design, a collection of noises not EXACTLY music, but musical in effect.
40 Days of Silence is slow but mesmerizing. It works as an art film, but is not for audience members that are uncomfortable with ambiguity.