I have known and admired Sarah Polley, a young Canadian actress, ever since her days on the popular television series "The Road to Avonlea" (laugh if you want, that show is amazing!). When I saw a suggestion on Netflix for a movie that I might enjoy called "The Secret Life of Words", starring Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins, I decided to add it to my list, even though I had heard nothing about it.
The 2005 independent film is about a young nurse (Polley) who is a refugee from the Bosnian War of 1992-1995 in which approx. 100,000 people were killed, and over a million were left homeless and refugees. Working in a factory where she has never missed a day, she is forced to take a vacation by her boss, and when she hears of a chance to fly to an oil rig off the coast of Northern Ireland to take care of a burn-victim (Robbins), she takes it.
The film is slow and quiet, and the atmosphere perfectly suits the characters that inhabit it. We do not know anything about the nurse, Hanna, at the beginning of the film. She doesn't say much, and it is through her slightest actions, daily routines and small expressions that we must decipher what there is to know about her. When we meet Josef (Robbins), he is blind and bed-ridden, and tries his best to get any information out of her. As we have seen her introverted, paranoid character go through the motions of living, when she starts to unwind just a little bit, you can sense the bond that is forming between Hanna and Josef. The supporting cast also adds charm to the film, especially Javier Cámara, who plays a chef, bored to tears with the isolation of the oil rig, in contrast to Hanna's ease and comfort away from people.
This character-based film plays itself out beautifully, dealing with the aftermath of one of the more brutal wars in recent history. During the Bosnian War, the atrocities included genocide, mass rape, ethnic cleansing and psychological rape. While the film doesn't dwell on the actuality of these events, in one of the more tragic moments I have seen on screen lately, details of these events are gone into, and it is heart-breaking to think about what people can do to each other. One of the reasons that I love this film is that it was a film that truly made me think. I suppose it kicked off with thinking about the events and information of the film, but it then turned into a thinking about humanity in general, and I was surprised that a film could still do that.
One of the sad realities that this film mentions is that events like the Bosnian War are not part of a collective conscious (at least in America). I remember learning briefly about it in middle school, and I have to give credit to my teacher for bringing it up, because it certainly is not part of public knowledge in the way that the Vietnam War, WWII, and even WWI are. If nothing else, this film is important because it remembers (or tries very hard to) that there were victims and survivors of that horrible conflict, and in its own small way, it is trying to make sure that they are not forgotten, as best as it can.
