As both the feature debut of short director Johnny Barrington, and the opening night premiere for the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Silent Roar certainly has a lot to live up to. With it, the short film director, recently named one of Scotland’s ‘Rising Stars’ in 2022, has an opportunity to establish his talents before a much wider film community. While the recently revived EIFF clearly selected the Hebrides-set film to demonstrate its value as a venue for displaying and elevating home-grown talent. Fortunately displaying the natural appeal of Scotland and its many talented artists is one of the things Silent Roar does well.
Set on Scotland’s rugged Western Isles the film follows Dondo (newcomer Lewis McCartney) a young surfer visibly still traumatised one year on from the disappearance of his father at sea. Dondo flirts with religion as a coping mechanism when the new Parish priest (Mark Lockyer) reopens the dilapidated local church. However, he finds much more age-appropriate comfort in his friendship with fellow student Sas (Ella Lily Hyland), the star pupil who’s curiosity about all things worldly and vulgar clashes with her parent’s expectations.
For a debut lead performance McCartney finds a wealth of material in Dondo, an awkward young man seeming to be permanently on edge. His every twitch and pose putting him at odds with the people around him. Most at ease when reciting Maori to himself or out on the surf. It’s at once an uncomfortable and soulful performance from a teen character, with Dondo’s increasingly erratic behaviour tempered by a desire for release. Tellingly neither God, nor Sas can truly ease his pain, but only present new forms for his trauma to manifest. A point which becomes especially obvious when he begins to see visions of Christ as a Black Swiss woman.
Barrington’s surreal take on religion impairs the story somewhat. It never reaches the point of full-fledged sermonising but certainly seems to frame Dondo’s conversion in entirely positive terms. Which makes it all the stranger when the third act climaxes with Dondo almost getting killed at sea in a religious fervour. At the same time turning Sas towards Militant Atheism in a manner neither telegraphed nor earned. Making for an incredibly bizarre shift in tone even considering trippy, dreamlike atmosphere much of the film operates in.
For its faults though Silent Roar is an exceptionally earnest and genuine coming-of-age film. Its two young leads (for it really is a double-act at times) read as honest representations of modern day teens. Even in the strange, almost anachronistic world of the Western Isles in which Barrington has built. Its feelings on faith may be confused and the emotional pace seems to run out of steam by the third act, but it’s painful, funny and filled with human drama.
