‘Sound of Falling’ Gets Bogged Down by Heavy Symbolism [Cannes]

Mascha Schilinski, a relatively unknown German filmmaker making her first appearance in the Cannes competition, arrives with “Sound of Falling,” a film that aspires to sweep across generations but ends up buried under the weight of its own ambitions.

Many critics are sold on the film, including IndieWire, Variety, THR, and Deadline — but I’m telling you it will be, for many, a real chore to sit through.

We begin with a photograph—more precisely, the curiosity of a seven-year-old girl named Alma who wonders why her image already occupies a place on the family’s dining room altar, alongside the dearly departed. Her question is simple, almost innocent, but it sets off a journey that spans over a century, threading through the lives of women named Angelika, Lenka, and Emma, all seemingly tethered to the same patch of rural farmland.

The timeline drifts from Prussian era to post-war neglect, from the ghosts of the 1970s to the present-day playing of wireless earbuds. Each character, each era, carries its own shadow of trauma and existential wondering, but the echoes are too often drowned out by the film’s heavy usage of symbolism and abstraction. By the time a creepy uncle enters the picture, the film has already asked more questions than it cares to answer.

“Sound of Falling” is filled with the kinds of visual cues that hint at Terrence Malick’s brand of otherworldliness— flies buzzing, rivers whispering, arms floating lifeless in the water. These aren’t merely eerie flourishes; they’re breadcrumbs, clues to when the narrative is shifting or a soul has migrated. Characters die and are reborn, it seems, in other bodies, in other times, and yet the burdens they carry remain stubbornly familiar.

Visually, the film teeters between the surreal and the unintelligible. Scenes fade to black without warning, the camera lingers too long in the haze, and when it isn’t blurring our view, it’s losing us in mazes of straw and shadow. Schilinski gives the film a spectral patina that is intended to evoke a kind of mythic timelessness, but instead creates a cinematic chore.

Yet for all its metaphysical musings, “Sound of Falling” never quite makes its case. It’s a formally bold film that wants to say something profound about life, death, and the legacy of family, but its message is muffled beneath layers of pretension. It’s a totally opaque experience.

In the end, Schilinski’s reach exceeds her grasp. “Sound of Falling” wants to haunt us—but it mostly confuses us.