by Jeffery Rahming, Contributing Writer
In 1963, twins were born to Aubrey and Gloria Gibbons. As the twins got older, they struggled to communicate due to a speech impediment. By the time they were eight years old, they had developed their own language that only they could understand and didn’t communicate with their family, teachers, or peers. The only black kids in their school, they were mercilessly bullied both for the color of their skin and their self-imposed silence. As they became teenagers, their actions became increasingly erratic. They began committing various crimes in secret. When together, they often tried to kill each other. When apart, they went into a catatonic state, unable to operate without the presence of the other. You wouldn’t be wrong in thinking that this sounds like something that crawled out of Stephen King’s brain. But The Silent Twins is based on a real and very strange story. While watching the movie, one might be mistaken in thinking that the filmmakers fabricated events for cheap drama but, for the most part, the plot is accurate to real story.
This project is just as unconventional as its characters. It attempts to string together the twin’s erratic and destructive actions with the vivid imagination and storytelling of their vast inner world, only revealed to the public through their diaries, tape recordings, and novels. Far from a traditional biopic (and really, how can it be?), the movie has multiple musical sections, trippy fantasy scenes, and a few sequences with creepy stop-motion dolls. It alternates between fantasy and reality so often that it gives you whiplash. One moment you’re watching a grim drama, and then you’re suddenly thrust into a colorful daydream with a boy drowning in Pepsi and, after that, a tale about a paper mache couple with three dead children.
As jarring as the switches in tones can be, it’s impressive that director Agnieszka Smoczyńska and cinematographer Jakub Kijowski are able to execute so many varying styles and techniques in one film, and it’s beautifully shot. I’m curious to see what both of them do for their next projects. In the end, the filmmakers were able to create an experience just as mysterious and uncomfortable as the protagonists.
The film’s subjects are fascinating enough to make for an engaging watch, but they’re also what makes it a bit of a challenge. It is historically accurate, but the actual story is still so outlandish that it makes for a disorienting experience. The mystery of why the twins acted this way remains unanswered to this day, and the movie makes no attempt to offer an explanation. This isn’t a criticism; there’s no answer the writers could’ve made up to make this strange case of behavioral phenomena make sense. But it’s a tough task to follow them as main characters since you never fully understand what’s going on with them, and it can sometimes be difficult to track how much of the film is really happening and how much is in their heads.
As hard as the protagonists may be to follow, Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance as June and Jennifer Gibbons, respectively, do a fantastic job portraying them. They bring to life the girls’ peculiar tendencies without making them into caricatures. It’s a very specific and challenging performance to pull off, and they both do an excellent job at humanizing their characters while still keeping them as alien as they were in reality.
This story is so many things at the same time: weird, violent, beautiful, and tragic. Most people will probably leave the film not quite knowing what to think of it, but that’s what it was meant to do. The Silent Twins isn’t a crowd pleaser by any means, but there’s no denying there’s a certain fascination in trying to comprehend the bizarre tale of these odd sisters.
Score: 7/10
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