Themes: Death of a Parent, Doctors and Patients, Living With Disability
Main Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, John Lithgow, Linda Hamilton, J.T. Walsh, Ben Faulkner
Release Year: 1994
Country: US
Run Time: 100 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
This by-the-numbers psychodrama about a child psychologist trying to discern the truth behind a pair of murders stars Richard Dreyfuss as Dr. Jake Rainer, a child psychologist living in an upscale community. Rainer retired when a patient committed suicide, but the local sheriff (J.T. Walsh) calls him to the scene of a double murder. In a lavish home, Rainer meets Tim Warden (Ben Faulkner) and his sister Sylvie (Liv Tyler, in her feature film debut), whose parents have been brutally slain. Sylvie hid in a closet and didn't see the killer, but Tim, who is autistic and cannot communicate, witnessed the crime. Rainer starts the complicated process of reaching Tim through gentle psychological techniques based on his theory that autistics think in sequences, while a colleague (John Lithgow) simply wants to drug the child into revealing the killer's identity. The real-life son of child psychologists who worked with autistic children, Silent Fall screenwriter Akiva Goldsman had better success with his first film, an adaptation of The Client (1994), a drama with a similar plot and themes. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
David James Bomba - Art Director, Shari Rhodes - Casting, Joseph Middleton - Casting, Lynn Bigelow - Co-producer, M. James Kouf Jr. - Co-producer, Penelope L. Foster - Co-producer, Colleen Kelsall - Costume Designer, Katterli A. Frauenfelder - First Assistant Director, Bruce Beresford - Director, Ian Crafford - Editor, Gary Barber - Executive Producer, Stewart Copeland - Composer (Music Score), Kathryn Bihr - Makeup, John Stoddart - Production Designer, Peter James - Cinematographer, James G. Robinson - Producer, Patty Malone - Set Designer, Chris Newman - Sound/Sound Designer, Akiva Goldsman - Screenwriter, Kevin Bartnof - Foley Artist
The plot revolves around Tim, an autistic boy. The film begins with our learning that Tim has supposedly witnessed his parents' double murder. Richard Dreyfuss plays Jake, a former child psychiatrist turned therapist who is called upon to probe the child's mind in order to solve the case. The psychological drama is provided by the fact that not even Jake can entice Tim to communicate about what he has or has not seen regarding the crime. Tim's sister, Sylvie, exerts a strong protective impulse towards Tim, and those who in her view do not adequately appreciate his condition. Although she eventually warms to the efforts of Jake, and even finds herself romantically drawn to him, she maintains some distance, suspecting that the police, as well as Jake, do not have her brother's best interests at heart.
To this end, we observe Sylvie's efforts to research Jake's past. She discovers, for example, that he was implicated in the suicide of a young child who was under his care (though Jake was never convicted, the plot suggests that this has left lingering doubts in his mind).
