Silent Tongue (1 of 12) with River Phoenix

Loading...

Sign in or sign up now!
Alert icon
Upgrade to the latest Flash Player for improved playback performance. Upgrade now or more info.
17,163
Loading...
Alert icon
Sign in or sign up now!
Alert icon

Uploaded by on Jun 5, 2009

Sorry, I will copy the rest at a better quality!!! This is River Phoenix's last released movie "Silent Tongue", directed by Sam Shepard. I don't see this movie on youtube at all that's why I decided to post it. I will load the rest of the movie soon I promise!

Here's a positive review of the movie and River's performance:

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/5947255/review/5947256/silent_tongue

Below is another review of the movie:

Silent Tongue Review
By Jon Fortgang
Our rating: Rating: 3.5 Stars(3.5)

The spirit of a dead Native American Indian woman seeks revenge on the white men who bought and sold her. River Phoenix, Richard Harris and Alan Bates star in this mystical western directed by the writer of Paris, Texas, Sam Shepard
Silent Tongue was River Phoenix's posthumous swansong, briefly released in the US four months after his drug-related death in October 1993 and arriving in the UK two years later. For its writer-director Sam Shepard, a prolific playwright whose collaborators have included Wim Wenders, Antonioni, Bob Dylan and Patti Smith, Silent Tongue was - and remains - only his second stint as a director.

Between them Shepard and Phoenix represent two of mythical America's most intriguing talents; Shepard's fascination with the country's spiritual and actual empty places found its most powerful expression in Paris, Texas. Phoenix was 1990s cinema's own Kurt Cobain - a reluctant poster boy for the climate of uncertainty which hovered over our culture at the start of the last decade. Appropriately, their collaboration is a sprawling fable which reaches deep into the dark past of the American west, dispensing with realism, rationalism and conventional logic in favour of an absurdist exploration of guilt and grief.

In nineteenth century New Mexico Talbot Roe (Phoenix) is the young man mad with sorrow following the death in childbirth of his part-Native American wife Awbonnie (Tousey). Now he lives under a tree with her disintegrating corpse and babbles incoherently at her angry ghost, who holds him responsible for her inability to pass over into the next life.

Awbonnie's father is Eamon McCree (Bates), a drunken, Irish snake oil salesman drifting through the plains with his ramshackle carny. Years back McCree sold Awbonnie to Talbot's father Prescott (Harris). Desperate in the face of his only son's madness, now Prescott tracks down McCree and demands to buy the Irishman's only other daughter as a replacement for the wife Talbot has lost.

Ironically, Phoenix's final performance was also his first proper adult role. In Running On Empty and My Own Private Idaho he'd made it clear that he was an actor whose natural constituency were characters too lost, lonely and fragile to make it through the night. Silent Tongue takes him to the very edge of that territory, and though he spends most of his time here rolling his eyes and wailing in the dark, it's a strangely articulate expression of grief-stricken madness.

Richard Harris, an actor rarely noted for his understatement, also brings a degree of tenderness and vulnerability to the role of Talbot's wide-eyed but misguided father. Sensing the need for ballast, perhaps, Alan Bates is magnificent as the extravagantly hammy charlatan McCree - a lyrical, venal "wizard of the plains", high on his own supply of medicinal tonic, and drifting towards delirium as he roams the wilderness.

Silent Tongue herself (Cardinal), mother to Awbonnie, barely appears though her back-story illustrates the film's subtext - the white man's rape of Native Americans' heritage - in a fairly uncompromising manner. Shepard aligns her with the landscape itself, and the empty, barren plains through which these characters tread becomes emblematic of a harsh strain of natural justice from which none of the white men escape.

The atmosphere is potent, and it's impressively shot, but there's also a terrible lack of cohesion that makes the film's desperate reach for meaningfulness look increasingly laboured. The performances, the sunsets and supernatural aura carry Silent Tongue so far, but when all the stories here have been told, you're left wondering just what Shepard's clash of symbols signifies. Nowhere is this clearer than in the final scene, designed to be both elliptical and cryptic, but which suggests this was a journey undertaken with no destination in mind.
Verdict
An unfocussed attempt to marry the western with social comment and the supernatural. It doesn't come off, but the ambition, the atmosphere and the brilliant performances make this worth seeking out.

source: http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=108332&section=review

  • likes, 1 dislikes

Link to this comment:

Share to:

Uploader Comments (RJP7093)

  • I want to know how they finished this movie it was supose to cme out in '94 and he died in '93. How long did I take to make this movie it usualy takes a year

  • lissa, i believe the movie completed filming before he died. it just wasn't released until after he died. if i remember correctly, this one was actually filmed before 'the thing called love'.

  • I couldn't find this movie anywhere. Thank you very much!

  • @JeanLouiseBlue I think I ordered this from amazon. another online place i frequent is deepdiscount so i may have ordered it from there.

  • Thanks!

    Yes, please try to upload the rest soon :)

  • I'm experiencing technical difficulties. i will try again on Monday from a different computer & connection so look forward to it. :o)

see all

All Comments (26)

Sign In or Sign Up now to post a comment!
  • que horrible se ve la imagen y el sonido

  • I love River Phoenix!

  • river......

  • This movie inspired me to understand my tribe, The Abenaki people. This story is similar to traditional Abenaki mythology. Silent Tongue is a masterpiece. RIP River. 

  • this was filmed in Roswell New Mexico , Sam Sheperd directed and produced it , it was filmed on the Diamond -A ranch just west of Roswell and I was lucky enough to be a extra in this epic movie about love lost , richard harris was one cool dude as well,

  • i like river and just about every movie i ever saw with him in it but i have to say this one sucked the only neat parts was her kicking the shit out of him...

  • @LissaDRox1996 The movie was actually filmed in 1992

  • does anyone have the movie, walksfar woman? have not seen that in years,came out in 77,wish someone could upload the movie

  • You can buy it via Ebay...

Loading...
Alert icon
0 / 00Unsaved Playlist Return to active list
    1. Your queue is empty. Add videos to your queue using this button:
      or sign in to load a different list.
    Loading...Loading...Saving...
    • Clear all videos from this list
    • Learn more