Naoko Yamada’s animated drama takes a school bully’s remorse seriously without letting him off easily. We recommend it for its tenderness and close attention to adolescent behaviour, with patience required for an overcrowded middle.
A Silent Voice asks how much attention we owe a boy who has made another child’s life miserable. Naoko Yamada’s animated school drama follows Shouya Ishida as he seeks forgiveness from Shouko Nishimiya, the deaf classmate he bullied. It is a patient, moving film, well worth the evening, though the crowded middle would benefit from a firmer cut. Its hardest task is to make us care about Shouya without making his unhappiness an excuse.
The childhood bullying establishes why a simple apology cannot settle things. Yamada watches the relationships around the two children as closely as the cruelty itself, paying attention to the way school life makes other people’s opinions feel inescapable. We found the bullying hard to watch: the small expressions and awkward gestures keep the distress specific to the child enduring it. There is room for humour in these young people’s company, too. That helps them seem like people with lives beyond the worst things they have done or endured.
Cinematographer Kazuya Takao’s framing is particularly good at finding somewhere other than a face to look for a feeling. Details such as bruised knees matter here, and the off-centre compositions make an ordinary school encounter feel difficult. Yamada’s use of expressions and gestures rewards looking closely; the animation does not need a grand setting to hold our attention. The softness of the images also makes sense in a story where the memory of childhood cruelty keeps interfering with the present.
Kensuke Ushio’s music contributes to the film’s attention to feelings the characters cannot comfortably express, and the careful use of sound helps establish the distance between its two leads. The trouble comes when there are too many other relationships asking for equal attention. Reiko Yoshida’s screenplay has plenty of interest in the surrounding school politics, but some of those detours interrupt the more absorbing business between Shouya and Shouko. Kengo Shigemura’s editing does not quite solve that problem. At 129 minutes, the film has stretches where we are waiting for it to return to the people who matter most.
Miyu Irino’s Shouya is difficult company, as he ought to be. The boy’s self-loathing is treated seriously, and Yamada resists making regret an achievement for which he deserves immediate credit. Saori Hayami’s Shouko needs more room than Yoshida’s screenplay always gives her. Looking at bullying through the bully’s eyes brings a useful discomfort, but it also risks making the person he hurt chiefly important as someone who might forgive him. That imbalance occasionally weakens otherwise sensitive work.
Within the school drama, Yamada finds plenty worth taking seriously in behaviour that adults might dismiss as adolescent fuss. Being liked can seem urgent enough to make ordinary decency negotiable, and the shifting relationships give that pressure force. Shouya can recognise what he has done and still struggle to know how to behave around Shouko. That makes the slower, uncomfortable exchanges worth staying with, even when the surrounding story becomes busy. Give it an evening when nobody is expecting a light school romance.
