The fact that the concept of ‘political prisoner’ has more or less disappeared from today’s vocabulary says something about our era. Just as the widespread use of the term ‘liberation movements’ in the 1970s says a lot about the position and the image of those movements. The début film by David Ballerini is about a political prisoner, the IRA member Bobby Sands, who died after being on hunger strike for 66 days because he wanted to be recognized as a political prisoner. The Silence of the Skylark is a prime example of political-historical, balanced realism. The question of who was or is right at a political level is not that really relevant in this film with its baroque staging and style – neither the IRA nor the United Kingdom are mentioned in the film. The fact that the protagonist of this Italian film is played by Czech Ivan Franek only serves to increase the distance. Ballerini’s aim is more universal, and therefore also more topical. The starting point of the film is that Sands ended up in jail because he was a member of the IRA and therefore potentially dangerous. So it was ‘safer’ to lock him up. This is also an argument often used today… The Silence of the Skylark is a film about modern, mythological martyrdom, about maintaining humanity under extreme conditions, about the necessity of continuing to make choices. A film to make you angry. (GT)
