Viktor Film Review: The Silence of War

Via innovative cinematic language and expert sound design, Viktor impressively portrays a deaf man’s experience of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Award-winning filmmaker Olivier Sarbil (On the President’s Orders) presents a documentary that is both haunting and uplifting; it is the representation that Viktor deserves.

After an illness at five-years-old, Viktor lost almost all of his hearing. The sounds he can make out, with a hearing aid, are muffled. Viktor begins in Kharkiv at the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022. As citizens mobilise to fight against the incoming forces, Viktor’s disability means he is left at home with his mother. He wants more than anything to fight, to defend his country and honour his late father’s legacy, and his despondency at the situation deepens as Viktor progresses. From this distress and Viktor’s previous hobby of photography comes a way into the army as a member of the frontline press.

Here is where Viktor and the man himself begin to change. By involving himself in the war effort as a photographer, he can also help citizens in different ways, such as providing aid to a struggling family or to a soldier who has recently lost his hearing. The terrific sound design takes full flight from this point as well. Designed by the team behind Sound of Metal (2019), the aural component of Viktor mirrors his own psychological mindset and the cloaked sounds of war—quieter, but no less terrifying. 

Frequent scenes of Viktor with a samurai sword—he takes daily influence from Miyamoto Musashi’s The Strategy of the Samurai—act as a constant reminder that he still dreams of fighting in the war. He comes close: after befriending a soldier and showcasing his impressive shooting skills, he offers his assistance to the commander, but is turned down because of his disability. Viktor clearly explains how he can be of use, arguing that many of the commander’s soldiers can rarely hear him on a noisy battlefield, but his pleas go nowhere. The emotional toll this takes on Viktor is starkly captured by Sarbil, but despite this disappointment, the documentary builds into a body of hope without ever forgetting that the conflict in Ukraine is ongoing.

Sarbil is occasionally guilty of overly stylising things, which detracts from the harsh reality of the world on show, but Viktor generally glares with a colourless, black-and-white danger steeped in realism, despite a somewhat aimless structure. The scenes filmed directly on the frontline perhaps carry less weight than something like 20 Days in Mariupol (2023), but the unique element of Viktor’s disability make the documentary an extremely compelling watch.

Disasterpiece’s (It Follows) melancholic, string-based original score is sparingly used, but always at the right times. So often in Viktor, the use of silence is much more effective. These elements coalesce to create a unique and special audiovisual experience that is a haunting rumination on war and one man’s role and experiences within it.

Viktor was screened at TIFF on September 8, 2024. Read our reviews of The Editorial Office, Checkpoint Zoo, and Superpower.