The Silence

"The Silence" is a German film, a thriller of sorts. If this is the standard sort of film made in Germany why don't we get more over here? Probably because most people don't like subtitles. So, when one comes along, it's not shown in the large cinema complexes but in Art Houses like Cardiff's Chapter Arts Centre.
It's a good, tense film about two murders: a young girl gets killed at the beghinning of the film and, 20 or so years later, another girl is killed in the same spot and in the same way. The invesitigation is led by the local force but a just-retired copper wants a hand in finding the killer because, not having found the man 20 years ago, he feels now that he must do to since his lack of success previously led to his life going to pieces. It's quite a complicated plot and the film seems more interested in showing the effects of the killings on the girls' relatives and the lives of the police investigators themselves. The last half hour of the film is really very tense as the pincers of the law close in on the two suspects.
However, it lacks something that say, "The Killing", the Danish TV serial had: (a) there is no central character from whose viewpoint one tends to witness the action; (b) there is no final resolution of the case since one of the assailants gets away with it; (c) there is an air of squalor somehow about it: the two suspects are paedophiles yet they are treated with an almost caring sympathy.
When films purposely end with something unresolved like the killer getting away with the crime, having been brought up on American films of the forties and fifties, I get to feel that the man shouldn't go stock free, I want to see him nailed as in The Big Sleep, I desire revenge.
So "The Silence" is one of those Continental films that leaves you guessing and a bit troubled. I think they have, over there in France and Germany anyway, the feeling that leaving it like this, not "American-finalised" so to speak gives the film profundity. Which is just not the case.