Silent Friend Review: Tree of Life

I didn’t discover Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi is in her 70s until after I watched Silent Friend, her two-and-half-hour meditation on the mysterious communion of humans with the natural world, but it certainly tracks: Silent Friend has the unhurried pace and admirable long view of someone who’s seen a lot of life – not unlike the titular friend.

The silent friend is a tree. A ginkgo biloba, to be specific. It’s almost comically large (a camera pan from the roots to its tippy-top takes a whole 25 seconds – I counted), and is beyond majestic. There is something ancient-feeling about it, though it was “only” planted in 1832, and in Silent Friend, three different generations are drawn to it. 

The framing story is the modern one, in which a neuroscientist named Tony (played by world cinema legend Tony Leung Chiu-wai of In the Mood for Love) arrives at a German university as a visiting professor, only to be stranded there when COVID hits. Alone except for a groundskeeper (Sylvester Groth) who eyes him with narrow-minded suspicion, Tony wanders the emptied-out buildings like a passenger on a ghost ship. His research project into infant brain activity suspended, Tony becomes interested in the towering ginkgo and begins experiments to see if he can track similar signs of consciousness in the tree. 

In 1908, another scientist is drawn to the tree – this one is Grete (Luna Wedler), a fledgling botanist and the first ever female student to be accepted into the university. Her experiences are very different from Tony’s, save that she too is an outcast – tolerated, but not welcomed, by the sexist institution. And in 1972, another outsider, Hannes (Enzo Brumm) – an awkward farm boy turned student trying to shed his rural background – finds his way back to the earth under the shade of the ginkgo. (Well, the pining for a plant-loving girl may have motivated the change of heart some, too.)

Enyedi and cinematographer Gergely Pálos move elegantly between these three timelines using three different formats: a somber, black & white 35mm suitable for Grete’s more formal era; 16mm in Hanne’s Seventies, lush with color and new growth and raging hormones; and crisp digital for the 2020 section, bolstered by Tony’s brainwave data that swells gracefully in all kinds of color, a perfect concert of science and art. 

Silent Friend would make an interesting (if stamina-testing) double feature with Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling, another Germany-language film about history echoing across eras in a single location, though Silent Friend is a more optimistic work. The title is the most sentimental thing about it; alternatively, I’d call it sensual. The sound design is thick with subterranean rumbles and squelches, while above ground, it buzzes heavily with insect life and doesn’t flinch when a schnitzel gets barfed up at the base of the ginkgo. It is a testament to Tony Leung’s eternal cool that he manages to look unruffled even when emptying his stomach; he projects a stillness and soulfulness that mirrors the mighty tree. 

Silent Friend considers less awesome plant life, too: I was surprised to find myself gasping in concern over the fate of a geranium. As for the fates of its humans, Enyedi does not force the narrative into any tidy conclusions. A sincere and searching work – even trippy, in discrete doses – Silent Friend takes the ginkgo’s perspective. It’s in it for the long haul. The people are just passing through.

Silent Friend opens at AFS Cinema on May 22.

Silent Friend

2025, NR, 147 min. Directed by Ildikó Enyedi. Starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Luna Wedler, Enzo Brumm, Sylvester Groth, Marlene Burow, Léa Seydoux.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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