So graphic is the violence perpetrated toward children in the South Korean drama "Silenced" that one wonders how well (or not) the feature's young actors dealt with their distressing scenes.
Based on the 2009 novel "Dogani" by Gong Jee-young, itself a thinly disguised exposé of a real-life case of rampant sexual abuse of deaf kids by one school's authorities, "Silenced" doesn't hold much back.
Half the story focuses on grim, shocking details of systematic beatings and rapes of boys and girls at a school for hearing-impaired students in Mujin city. The second half is essentially a courtroom drama in which the victims and their allies face an uphill battle for justice.
The major connecting link is the lead character, an art teacher named Kang In-ho (Gong Yoo) who takes a position at the Mujin school and becomes an advocate for the kids.
The subsequent trial of the school's principal and two staffers gets to the heart of the movie's message. Cronyism, corruption and backward laws stymie the prosecution's case.
The 2005 trial that inspired this story was decried as an example of unenlightened laws concerning sexual abuse of children and the disabled. This film reportedly created enough stir in South Korea that the country's National Assembly passed the "Dogani Law," reforms named for the movie's Korean title.
The good that "Silenced" has done certainly outweighs its flaws, but there are certainly some of those: character and plot tropes that pad out the story but have little to do with it. (In-ho is a widower with a sickly child; his chief ally is a brassy, iconoclastic human-rights worker.)
While director Hwang Dong-hyuk is committed to brutal honesty, he also flashes an interesting taste for eccentricity, especially in the way he captures the film's villains. What's certain is that "Silenced" will haunt a viewer for a while.
Tom Keogh: tomwkeogh@gmail.com
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