Deadly Manners: The Limits of Tolerance in ‘Speak No Evil’

Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil, available now on Shudder, opens to a dimly lit dirt road and a swelling orchestral score, setting the tone for a grounded thriller of almost mythic proportions. Centering around two families who meet on vacation in Tuscany, Speak No Evil begins as a dark comedy of manners about being backed into a corner by social norms, but by its end devolves into one of the most devastating horror/thriller films of the year. 

Image via IMDB

Several months following their Tuscan holiday, Danish family Bjørn (Morten Burian), Louise (Sidsel Siem Koch), and young Agnes (Liva Forsberg) receive a letter from the charming family they met while away, inviting them to spend a weekend at their home in the Netherlands. While Louise has some reservations, saying, “It’s a bit too long to spend with people we barely know,” Bjørn fears it would be too impolite to decline their first invitation from new friends. “What’s the worst that can happen,” their friend jokes. Quite a lot, as it turns out.

What follows is a steady, calculated pushing of boundaries by the Dutch couple, Patrick (Fedja van Huêt) and Karin (Karina Smulders)—a stretching of the social mores that so strictly guide the Danish couple. The transgressions begin almost immediately. Patrick carves up a roasted wild boar, offering Louise the first bite, despite having had a lively conversation in Tuscany about her pescetarianism. Bjørn urges her to take just a small bite, which she does, sure that they must have forgotten. Later, Louise takes pause when Karin directs Agnes in manners and etiquette. It’s a small invasion of parental boundaries that clearly offends Louise, but she stays silent, not wanting to cast a shadow over the evening.

The tone of the film takes a notable shift when, after taking out the trash, Bjørn finds himself alone with the Dutch family’s mute son Abel (Marius Damslev), who eerily opens his mouth, revealing to Bjørn the reason for his muteness. Abel has congenital aglossia, Patrick later explains, a rare condition in which a child is born without a tongue. Strange as Abel’s reveal seems, the explanation is a legitimate one, adding to the sense that everything that has happened to the Danes so far have been annoying, sure, and slightly offensive, but ultimately benign. Patrick and Karin may not be as compatible a couple as Bjørn once thought, but they could certainly bear the weekend.

As the days go on, lines continue to be crossed, and the shockingly dark parable comes into focus. The Danes are paralyzed by the social discomfort at coming across as rude. With several chances to escape from the increasingly apparent red flags, they are pulled back each time by Patrick and Karin’s shocked faces and their apologetic (and manipulative) explanations of the deep misunderstandings taking place between the families. By the time Bjørn finds his resolve, it’s already far too late.

The larger than life orchestral score comes bursting through scenes that might not have otherwise called for it, such as the family sitting down for dinner prior to their trip or a casual family walk with the Dutch family to an old windmill and playground. Such scenes are given an inflated significance that add to the disquietude of the film. It also contributes to the film’s becoming something of a modern myth, adding an epic quality to otherwise mundane scenarios. Tafdrup’s intention for Speak No Evil to serve as this modern myth is made clear, too. The plot structure is set up very much like a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, and even includes a nod to “The Little Mermaid” in Bjørn and Louise’s gift to the Hollanders. Another mythical reference serves as a backdrop to the end credits—a dimly lit image of “The Rape of Ganymede,” which almost mockingly punctuates the events of the preceding half-hour.

Christian Tafdrup has said in several interviews that his goal was to make a disturbing portrait of the extreme consequences of being too polite. In this, he wildly succeeds. But more importantly, he’s given us a lesson in tolerating intolerance, a paradox famously taken up by philosopher Karl Popper, among others. According to Popper, a society of unlimited tolerance will inevitably be led to its ruin by the intolerant. In other words, a perfectly tolerant society must, in its own self-interest, not tolerate the intolerant. It’s a question of dire importance to our own society—one of the (American) right-wing’s favorite retorts is about how the “supposed tolerant left” is so quick to boycott extremist speakers, books, or other media. The most troubling thing is that Popper himself predicted exactly this response in 1945:

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“I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument…”

—Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies

Popper foresaw in the intolerant enemy a willingness to denounce argument altogether—to summarily declare themselves divinely right and reject any contrary argument as invalid or false. Popper’s warning, and by extension, Tafdrup’s, is that society cannot be blinded by ideology; that to ceaselessly tolerate those who seek to do you or others harm is to invite disaster upon yourself. In a time of rising extremist discourse, the lessons we can take from Speak No Evil are as important as ever. “This is about doing what is right!” Bjørn shouts during one of the only times he stands up for himself, just before backing off again.

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Article by Ande Thomas

Ande loves the intersection of sci-fi and horror, where our understanding of the natural world clashes with our fear of the new and unknown. He writes about monsters and foreign horror and can also be found over on Letterboxd.