Post by Dracula on Feb 19, 2023 14:12:24 GMT -5
The Silent Twins(1/6/2023)
The Silent Twins was a movie that was kind of hard to market when it came out earlier this year; it’s sort of a Polish movie but it’s set in the UK and is in English and it’s hard to just describe the plot without kind of making it sound odd. In short it tells the true story about a pair of black British identical twins named Jennifer and June Gibbons, who went to school during the 70s and 80s and seemed to have some sort of odd psychological issues that I’m not sure science ever figured out. The two were both capable of speech and spoke to each other frequently when they were alone with each other but refused to speak to their parents or teachers and as they reached their teen years they began acting out in erratic ways which ultimately landed them in a mental institution for over a decade, being treated by doctors who basically had no idea how to deal with them. Along the way they did a bunch of writing and art projects which have come to be viewed as interesting outsider art and this film Agnieszka Smoczyńska (director of the Polish mermaid horror musical The Lure) incorporates some of this art into the film but it’s otherwise more of a biographical account. There were certainly a number of systemic errors that were made along the way in this story but the movie doesn’t necessarily seem to be out to point fingers at society, nor is it really trying to “explain” what went on with these two, whose behavior is about as baffling to the audience as it is to the people around them. In some ways that’s an asset, as seeking easy answers would have been kind of cheap, but a bit more of a drive towards some sort of goal might have made the film work a bit better. It’s an interesting watch but it lacks a certain something I couldn’t quite place my finger on.
***1/2 out of Five
The Silent Twins was a movie that was kind of hard to market when it came out earlier this year; it’s sort of a Polish movie but it’s set in the UK and is in English and it’s hard to just describe the plot without kind of making it sound odd. In short it tells the true story about a pair of black British identical twins named Jennifer and June Gibbons, who went to school during the 70s and 80s and seemed to have some sort of odd psychological issues that I’m not sure science ever figured out. The two were both capable of speech and spoke to each other frequently when they were alone with each other but refused to speak to their parents or teachers and as they reached their teen years they began acting out in erratic ways which ultimately landed them in a mental institution for over a decade, being treated by doctors who basically had no idea how to deal with them. Along the way they did a bunch of writing and art projects which have come to be viewed as interesting outsider art and this film Agnieszka Smoczyńska (director of the Polish mermaid horror musical The Lure) incorporates some of this art into the film but it’s otherwise more of a biographical account. There were certainly a number of systemic errors that were made along the way in this story but the movie doesn’t necessarily seem to be out to point fingers at society, nor is it really trying to “explain” what went on with these two, whose behavior is about as baffling to the audience as it is to the people around them. In some ways that’s an asset, as seeking easy answers would have been kind of cheap, but a bit more of a drive towards some sort of goal might have made the film work a bit better. It’s an interesting watch but it lacks a certain something I couldn’t quite place my finger on.
***1/2 out of Five
