t the behest of his father's last will and testament, Sam Frank (Pearce) must leave his life in Melbourne and return to Genoa, the sleepy bush town where he spent summers as a teenager, in order to bury the man. The journey there proves to be a journey to remembrance.
Thoughts of this place bring memories both painful and sweet. Sam remembers his father's indifference and stoicism in the face of Sam's need to connect with the only parent he had as a young man (Joyner), having lost his mother some time before. But Sam also remembers the tender and enchanting times he spent with Silvy (Harman), a plucky but sensitive girl with the soul of a poet, held back only by the braces she had to wear on her debilitated legs. He also remembers, try as he might not to, that terrible night down at the river.
On the train ride to his father's funeral, Sam has a brief but intriguing encounter with a woman named Ruby (Carter), whom he doesn't see again until the following, rainy night in Genoa—when he pulls her from the river into which she's just jumped.
Sam takes the unconscious Ruby back to his father's house and cares for her. When she finally wakes, Ruby wonders if Sam is a doctor. He tells her he is, of sorts—he's a psychiatrist. This proves to be more useful than either could have imagined, as the disoriented woman seems to be suffering from amnesia. Yet as the two try to get Ruby to remember herself, Sam becomes haunted by the feeling that he already knows her.
Poetical but predictable
Taken from a T.S. Eliot poem, the title of this film sets the tone—lyrical, meditative and tragic. Deep, rich cinematography complements some compelling story elements and some engaging acting performances, but as it develops, Till Human Voices Wake Us starts to read like poor poetry in its reliance on the timeworn.
Petroni's film is a ghost story in the vein of Beloved and Truly Madly Deeply, but its magical realism is revealed too soon to be really mysterious and in a manner not quite sophisticated enough to be as emotionally powerful as it seems to want to be.
Though Guy Pearce is very successful in embodying that certain damaged something of a man who long ago closed down his feelings in response to great pain, the story of his emotional journey seems more overdone than classic. Ever-pallid Helena Bonham Carter is convincing as a confused, lost soul, if (in an otherwise very "quiet" movie) a bit too frenetic and Ophelia-tic in her bedraggled, wide-eyed gazing.
Joyner and Harman are simply charming as the young friends who become lovers, but the film has them pause perhaps once too often on one of their many two-to-a-bicycle rides in order to say something musing and softhearted to each another. Scenes of farmgirl Sylvie's father (Gallacher) generously dishing out Scots-accented, salt-of-the-earth wisdom approach feeling downright staged.
There are a number of moments, however, when Till Human Voices Wake Us doesn't push its sentiments too far, and those moments hold some real symbolic, affective, artistic force. The question is whether viewers will want to buy a whole book that has but a few good poems in it.
