Land of Silence and Darkness (Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit)
Directed by Werner Herzog
Witten by Werner Herzog
1971/West Germany
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental
Once I knew only darkness and stillness… my life was without past or future… but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. — Helen Keller
In a land of silence and darkness, people do the best with what they’ve got.
Frau Fini Staubinger, now in her later years, had lost both her sight and her hearing by the time she was 16. In this documentary, she tells the story of her life. (She stayed in bed for 30 years!) Somehow Frau Staubinger broke free and dedicated the rest of her life to helping other deaf and blind people to improve their connection with each other and with the world. She was better equipped than some to serve as their ambassador since she could speak fluently having retained her hearing to a more advanced age.
I liked this a lot. It was sad to think about being cut off from such basic parts of the human experience. And yet these people were certainly not sitting around feeling sorry for themselves.
