Voice from the StoneIn their grief, some seek answers from unorthodox places, though few could claim to find solace from voices coming from rocks. Voice from the Stone is a (possibly supernatural) romantic mystery set in post-World War II Italy. It follows a young woman named Verena (Emilia Clarke), who works as a teacher for the troubled children of wealthy families. She receives a job offer from a reclusive sculptor named Klaus (Marton Csokas) to restore the voice of his son, Jakob (Edward George Dring), who has refused to speak since the passing of Jakob's mother, Malvina (Caterina Murino), a few years earlier. And the longer that Verena stays with Jakob, the more she believes that the spirit of Malvina dwells within the stone that makes up most of the estate.
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Much of Voice from the Stone is cryptic, which leaves the movie feeling confoundingly ephemeral or just plain confusing. It opens with Malvina on her deathbed, predicting to Jakob that "a woman will come who will love him". Following her passing, Jakob remains deliberately mute, and when he finally speaks at the end, it becomes a fulfillment of Malvina's prophesy to return his mother to him...in a manner of speaking. (It's just...I thought I was paying attention to the movie, but...I didn't remember any foreshadowing about when he speaks next, the woman who hears him will "become" his mother.) Our introduction to Verena happens outside of some other Italian garden near a spacious villa. A young girl looks overwrought to see Verena leave, for Verena has performed some...service for the family that remains unclear and ambiguous. A lot of Voice from the Stone is lifted whole cloth from other works. Verena herself is presented as, essentially, a "miracle worker", recalling the story of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller. Despite claims about her prowess with helping children--along with a bundle of letters that she keeps as though evidence of this--she seems rather ill-equipped to break through to Jakob, so her occupation becomes little more than a convenient plot device. And even though Klaus suggests that others have tried (and failed) to compel his son to speak again, he's not just critical of Verena's confidence to accomplish the task, but is almost openly hostile toward her. Voice from the Stone is attempting to model the (unconvincing) relationship between Klaus and Verena after the likes of "Jane Eyre" or "Rebecca", both featuring romances between two unlikely souls, where the kindly visiting woman reawakens the heart of an aloof but wealthy man. But romance feels as unlikely between these two as can be. It isn't until another--all too convenient--episode occurs after Verena climbs a tree and tears her dress that the story seems determined to push the affair. Verena, at the behest of an elderly resident companion named Lilia (Lisa Gastoni), tries on one of Melvina's dresses. In a scene ripped right from Hitchcock's Rebecca, Klaus orders her to "take it off", but relents after seeing her in a state of undress. It isn't lust--at least not outwardly--that motivates him, however. For the first time, we learn that he is a sculptor and that he was unable to finish a nude statue of his wife before she died. And yes, before you ask, he actually does ask Verena to pose in her stead. It's at this point that Voice from the Stone is counting on its audience being ignorant to the fact that nude modeling in the art world is intended to be devoid of sexual stimulation. Verena, who heretofore has shown not romantic feelings for Klaus--and vice versa--suddenly begins fantasizing about the sculptor after an all-too erotically charged modelling session, with mood lighting et al. Even though this is the first instance of any real passion in Voice from the Stone--a movie so bleached of it that you'd think it was a metaphor for the eponymous stone--it still comes off as wildly unbelievable, yet again feeling like its presence is solely to propel the plot forward.
Back to Jakob, it's normal that a child would be grief-stricken at the loss of his mother and stay this way for a long time. It's even understandable that he would be withdrawn, so it makes sense for a father to try to encourage his son return to him. But Klaus is outright cold, even stern, with the boy. Jakob--then Klaus--occasionally plays with a small stone, emphasizing that there is something "special" about the rocks that come from the family quarry. However, all this amounts to are a couple of scenes with Jakob swimming in the quarry and the two of them weirdly holding their ears to the stone to listen. As to what their listening for, that has yet to be revealed, making this almost random display just seem odd to the audience. Verena eventually discovers Jakob--who lives in an all-too creepy bedroom with cracks in the walls--listening to the walls under a blanket, so she opts to try for herself. Suddenly, she "hears" the voice of Malvina offering comfort to Jakob, and this is where Voice from the Stone desperately tries to justify its title. Is the stone haunted? Could there be a scientific explanation, like that this special stone somehow manages to retain echoes of conversations, even years past? Or, and this seems more plausible, is Verena hallucinating? I say "plausible" because this represents yet another attempt by Voice from the Stone to rip off classic literature, in this case Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw". In that novella, the governess begins to experience a haunting or (more compellingly) imagines that she is haunted due to various reasons, interpreted by readers to be anything from sexual repression to religious angst, or both. Almost all of this fits with Verena, whose sexuality only awakens after she trades in her monochromatic dress for the sunnier (and more revealing) outfit formerly belonging to the luxurious Malvina. As with the protagonist of "The Turn of the Screw", Verena begins to increasingly identify with her predecessor, losing hold on her identity in the process. While it's interesting to consider that Verena may just be imagining this, the film hardly presents her as being as neurotic or anxious as the governess from "The Turn of the Screw", making it all the less convincing when she starts doing stuff like talking to rocks. (At one point, Verena actually yells at the wall to speak to her again. Really.) By the climax of Voice from the Stone, Verena suffers a fever just like the one that killed Malvina. It's at this point that the film chooses to dump out all of its leftover red herrings and unformed ideas, only to play them off as fevered dreams later. Of course this doesn't stop the film from deploying them as narrative twists, only to double back on them within minutes. (Just kidding!) The movie's trying to have it both ways, yet ends up straddling the middle instead, and the result is a confused mess of ideas that never settles on whether it is a ghost story or not, a romance or not, a mystery or not. I suppose that if Voice from the Stone has something to say, it's too garbled for anyone to make any sense of it.
Recommended for: Fans of an exceedingly derivative tale--it's all but plagiarizing notable classic gothic romances--that may be lovely to watch but feels as confusing as a fevered dream from start to finish. Voice from the Stone is a strange collage of other better works; heck, it even feels like a riff on Mary Poppins, albeit with a lot more nude sculpturing and a lot less chimney sweeps.
Back to Jakob, it's normal that a child would be grief-stricken at the loss of his mother and stay this way for a long time. It's even understandable that he would be withdrawn, so it makes sense for a father to try to encourage his son return to him. But Klaus is outright cold, even stern, with the boy. Jakob--then Klaus--occasionally plays with a small stone, emphasizing that there is something "special" about the rocks that come from the family quarry. However, all this amounts to are a couple of scenes with Jakob swimming in the quarry and the two of them weirdly holding their ears to the stone to listen. As to what their listening for, that has yet to be revealed, making this almost random display just seem odd to the audience. Verena eventually discovers Jakob--who lives in an all-too creepy bedroom with cracks in the walls--listening to the walls under a blanket, so she opts to try for herself. Suddenly, she "hears" the voice of Malvina offering comfort to Jakob, and this is where Voice from the Stone desperately tries to justify its title. Is the stone haunted? Could there be a scientific explanation, like that this special stone somehow manages to retain echoes of conversations, even years past? Or, and this seems more plausible, is Verena hallucinating? I say "plausible" because this represents yet another attempt by Voice from the Stone to rip off classic literature, in this case Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw". In that novella, the governess begins to experience a haunting or (more compellingly) imagines that she is haunted due to various reasons, interpreted by readers to be anything from sexual repression to religious angst, or both. Almost all of this fits with Verena, whose sexuality only awakens after she trades in her monochromatic dress for the sunnier (and more revealing) outfit formerly belonging to the luxurious Malvina. As with the protagonist of "The Turn of the Screw", Verena begins to increasingly identify with her predecessor, losing hold on her identity in the process. While it's interesting to consider that Verena may just be imagining this, the film hardly presents her as being as neurotic or anxious as the governess from "The Turn of the Screw", making it all the less convincing when she starts doing stuff like talking to rocks. (At one point, Verena actually yells at the wall to speak to her again. Really.) By the climax of Voice from the Stone, Verena suffers a fever just like the one that killed Malvina. It's at this point that the film chooses to dump out all of its leftover red herrings and unformed ideas, only to play them off as fevered dreams later. Of course this doesn't stop the film from deploying them as narrative twists, only to double back on them within minutes. (Just kidding!) The movie's trying to have it both ways, yet ends up straddling the middle instead, and the result is a confused mess of ideas that never settles on whether it is a ghost story or not, a romance or not, a mystery or not. I suppose that if Voice from the Stone has something to say, it's too garbled for anyone to make any sense of it.
Recommended for: Fans of an exceedingly derivative tale--it's all but plagiarizing notable classic gothic romances--that may be lovely to watch but feels as confusing as a fevered dream from start to finish. Voice from the Stone is a strange collage of other better works; heck, it even feels like a riff on Mary Poppins, albeit with a lot more nude sculpturing and a lot less chimney sweeps.