A Silent Voice Review

Shoya is the aggressor and the film keeps him there. It opens with the bullying in full, unglamorised and prolonged, then follows the social collapse that makes him the class outcast in turn, and it never offers that reversal as justice or as absolution. Yamada shoots feet, hands and the crosses drawn over faces rather than the faces themselves, a formal device that reads as Shoya's inability to look at anybody and pays off exactly once, in a shot everyone remembers.

Shoko is written with an honesty most films avoid, resentful and self-erasing rather than saintly, and the supporting cast includes people who are simply unpleasant and stay that way. Kyoto Animation's work here is its best on film, with an attention to light on water, on hair and on empty classrooms that gives ordinary places real weight. Kensuke Ushio's score, built from prepared piano and breath, is unusual and completely correct. Compressing the manga leaves a couple of subplots stranded, and the ending reaches slightly further than the film has earned by that point.