Function Words

I've seen a few movies in the last couple weeks that I have not mentioned here.
The most recent one was: The Secret Life of Words, a 2005 movie with Tim Robbins and Sarah Polley.
I'm not sure what motivated me to put it in my Netflix queue but it was one very touching movie.
The story takes place mainly on an off-shore oil rig off the coast of Denmark, I think.
When the movie begins we see some disconnected video of an industrial explosion that is hard to sort out.
Then the story goes to a factory where most of the employees are women working on some kind of assembly line.
One of the workers is a hard of hearing woman named Hanna who seems more like an automoton that a person. She is called into the bosses office and told to take a vacation because the other workers think she is "difficult".
She goes to an undetermined coastal city, checks into a hotel. While eating at a chinese restaurant she overhears a phone conversation about needing a nurse for a patient that can't be moved. Out the window we see an oil rig that appears to be on fire. She tells the guy that she is a nurse and volunteers to go take care of the guy.
She goes out to the oil rig where Tim Robbins is the blinded burn victim. She begins taking care of him and over the course of her time on the rig we begin to learn more about both Hanna and the burn victim's life on the rig.
The performances are wonderful. The story is very powerful. We get an explanation of why Hanna is so robotic. A gem of a movie. The kind of story that stays with you for a long time.

Labels: movies