Dead Silence certainly isn’t the movie I expected from the director of Saw. It’s a solid, slightly more sophisticated horror film, one that I imagine director James Wan was thinking of making when he got his big break with the gruesome, albeit groundbreaking Saw. In fact, it was bold move, making a ghost story when hyper-graphic horror films are all the rage.

Wan wasn’t rewarded with box office success. Dead Silence only grossed $15 million at the North American box office. Yet the small scale, atmospheric horror film is a treat for audiences with enough sense to know the difference between shock and awe.

I say awe because Wan’s jackhammer subtlety is controlled enough to tell a simple tale rather effectively. It’s the tale of Jamie (Ryan Kwanten), a newlywed whose wife is mysteriously murdered after a ventriloquist’s dummy appears on his doorstep. When he finds his wife, her mouth is pried open as if she too were a puppet (the closest we get to gore in this film). While a cop (Donnie Walhberg) investigates Jamie, the newlywed heads to his hometown where the story of a murderous old ventriloquist, Mary Shaw (Judith Roberts), turns out to be more than just a legend.

Dead Silence very well could have been part of an anthology series, ala Masters of Horror. The story doesn’t call for Wan’s blue filters or red set pieces. The large(ish) sets border on excessive. The boyish Kwanten doesn’t look the part and Wan still hasn’t gained the ability to direct an actor. Yet, Dead Silence works thanks to good old-fashioned storytelling ability.

Wan never struck me as a competent storyteller until I saw Dead Silence. Watching the extras and seeing the characters he cut from the script and the terrible alternate opening and closing, you can see how far he’s come in terms of tightening the narrative since his work with Saw (and presumably as the executive producer of parts two, three, and four). Whereas I expected another incoherent, overacted, gore-heavy, schlock-fest, I can say I was pleasantly surprised by the tepid but competent ghost story I actually got.

The only truly unfortunate part of Dead Silence is seeing it fall flat in release. I didn’t love Dead Silence, but I didn’t hate it either. I would rather it succeed than the truly bad horror films that came in the wake of Saw. While Dead Silence may even be slightly bland, it isn’t as offensively bad as the so-called "torture porn" horror films that rely on jump cuts to get an R-rating. I’ll take confidently lackluster over faux-horrifying any day.

Evening puts together an excellent cast. It is based on the novel by Susan Minot and adapted for the screen by Ms. Minot and Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Cunningham of The Hours. This is a story of a timeless romance and its consequences.

Ann Lord (Vanessa Redgrave) is bedridden and is suffering from an irrational mind. She reveals a long-held secret about her past to her concerned daughters, Constance (Natasha Richardson), a content wife and mother, and Nina (Toni Collette), a restless single woman. Both are bedside when Ann calls out for man she loved more than any other she met. This man is Dr. Harris Arden (Patrick Wilson), and the daughters wonder who and what is he to their mother?

While Constance and Nina try to take stock of Ann's life and their own lives, their mother is tended to by a night nurse, sometimes seen as a fictitious angel (Eileen Atkins), as Ann journeys in her mind back to a summer weekend some fifty years ago, when she was Ann Grant (Claire Danes). In this flashback scene, young Ann has just come from New York City to be maid of honor at the high society Newport, Rhode Island wedding of her best friend from college, Lila Wittenborn (Mamie Gummer). The bride is jittery, and turns to Ann rather than her own mother (Glenn Close) for support. Ann stays close to Lila during this confusing time, knowing she is getting married to a man she doesn't love. Ann is closer than Lila's younger irrepressible alcoholic brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy) who has a crush on her.

Unexpected feelings surge when Ann meets wedding guest Harris Arden, a lifelong intimate friend of the Wittenborn family. A love affair between Ann and Harris triggers a fatal accident in the Wittenborn household and eventually changes the life of everyone at the wedding.

The story comes full circle and unfolds when Ann's best friend Lila Wittenborn, now Lila Ross (Meryl Streep), appears at her death bed. Meryl Streep's role is limited in this film but she adds a fine closure to a spectacular emsemble. The period piece flasback scenes and music of the 1950s add a nostalgic look and sound to an already excellent movie.

I found this film to be an illuminating, timeless love story and a deeply emotional narrative which binds mother and daughter – seen through the prism of one mother's life as it crests with optimism, navigates a turning point, and ebbs to its close. Two pairs of real-life mothers and daughters – Vanessa Redgrave and Natasha Richardson, and Meryl Streep and Mamie Gummer – portray, respectively, a mother and her daughter and the mother's best friend at different stages in life. The complete cast is unquestionably outstanding and I expect to see nominations at Oscar time for their roles.

Directed by: Lajos Koltai
Running time: 117 minutes
Release date: June 29, 2007
Genre: Drama
Distributor: Focus Features
MPAA Rating: PG-13

Though it seems like a natural, this Tuesday marks the first collaboration between Nova and National Geographic Television. The material, entitled "The Great Inca Rebellion," focuses on new discoveries and revelations about the Spanish conquest of the Incas. It is certainly a worthy topic for these two heavyweights to tackle together.

As the documentary states, for years the accepted version of the Incas' devastating defeat by the Spanish focused on horses, steel, and germs. The commonly accepted view is that due to the horses and steel of the Spanish conquistadors, the Incan army was no match for the Spanish. Then, as the Incas came into more contact with the Spanish, they fell ill and died due to diseases carried by the Spanish. In short, it is because the Spanish wore more advanced and somewhat lucky.

Now, however, a new theory has emerged. There are some historians, archaeologists, and assorted other scientists who are piecing together a different version of the events. They believe that while it is true that horses, steel, and germs helped the Spanish, that a deciding factor in these battles was in fact the enlistment of other native tribes to battle against the Incas.

Nova begins this story by talking to Peruvian archaeologist Guillermo Cock. Cock, who has for a long time been provided grants by National Geographic, discovered an old Incan burial ground on the outskirts of Lima. While some of the graves there are traditionally Incan in nature, nearly 70 others, which sit on top of the Incan graves, are not. They may contain Incas and other natives of the region, but they are buried haphazardly, not in the methodical Incan style. The bodies also contain crushing blows to the skull and numerous broken bones.

After bringing in experts, it was determined that at least one of these bodies contains a bullet wound, one that is consistent with what would be produced by the Spanish guns of the era. That, along with other evidence, helps Cock and his team place the site as the first one that contained bodies from the same time period as the Inca Rebellion in Lima.

Once the narrative of the documentary gets this far,it takes a strong left turn and becomes almost something else entirely. Two separate historians, without the aid of the grave site, have already started putting together a different view of the Spanish conquest than the traditionally accepted European one, one in which other Indian tribes played a huge role in vanquishing the Incas. These historians recount how Francisco Pizarro's concubine was an Indian and how the Inca Rebellion in Lima was not put down due to a heroic charge on a part of the Spanish cavalry, but rather by the concubine having written to her mother, a tribal chief, that sent an army to help Pizarro.

The story of the cemetery and the Inca Rebellion are told with great style and it is clear that a lot of care went into constructing all the visual images. The various tales told within the single documentary are fascinating as well, but, as presented, they do not mesh as smoothly as they ought. They should work together perfectly as they are two halves of the same whole, but very little effort seems to have been put into having these two stories flow from one into the next. It's sad, because the rest of the documentary is put together well.

The historians interviewed have clearly been formulating their beliefs for longer than this new cemetery has been known to exist, yet the episode makes little mention of this. The cemetery supports the historians' already existing beliefs, rather than helping the historians formulate them. Additionally, the historians make no mention of the grave site. It seems completely and totally beside the point to them, which aids in the disjointed feel of the program.

Despite this weakness, the episode is an engrossing look at the historic realities of the Spanish conquest of the Incan Empire (which was, as the episode reminds us, in decline when Pizarro arrived). While the cemetery is clearly the impetus for the episode, the more fascinating aspects of the historical reality, the second half of the episode, is the more interesting half.

Nova – "The Great Inca Rebellion" airs on PBS, Tuesday, June 26 at 8pm. However, it's always best to check your local listings rather than just taking my word for it.