A Wadden film without commentary or music, because the Wadden are beautiful enough as it is

The magic of the tides. Pieter-Rim de Kroon was about 8 years old when he first became aware of it, during a holiday with parents and brothers on the Wadden Sea. At low tide, stretch a fishing line with hooks between two tent pegs, attach it to piers, wait for the tide to come and then ebb again, see what was on the hooks. Read afterwards about the influence of the gravity of the moon and the sun on the water level. And note: magic.

The 66-year-old documentary maker thought about this when he received the proposal to make a documentary about the Wadden area. That magical experience of ebb and flow had to become the guiding principle. More precisely: ‘I wanted to film the tidal process as a breath.’

That resulted in Silence of the Tides, a visually impressive documentary in which De Kroon travels through the entire Wadden area. Between 2017 and 2019, he and his crew filmed people, animals and locations in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark that you probably didn’t associate with this area before. ‘If you take the ferry from Harlingen to Terschelling and you cycle around there, you get a limited experience of the Wadden’, he says. ‘If you take a boat out on the mudflats in the winter and you fall dry, you end up in a kind of primordial world.’

It is a diverse primordial world, in Silence of the Tides† Full of clashing contrasts, filmed without voice-over, dialogue or supporting music. From postman Hanni who delivers packages on the German Halligen Islands with a single-passenger locomotive to the lighthouse keeper at the Brandaris traffic control center. From a wind organ player on Pellworm to the target practice of a fighter jet above the Vliehors on Vlieland. One minute a chick is hatching from an egg, the next we’re at a Marine Corps training session. ‘The contrast is there for the taking on the Wadden, I didn’t have to look for it. One moment there is almost no wind, it is low tide, you have a 360 degree horizon around you and nothing happens at all. Then suddenly: the deafening sound of an F-16 flying over. And then it’s completely quiet again. And then there are the tourists who come in the summer and disappear at the end of the season. Birds that migrate and return. The idea of ​​breathing returns everywhere.’

Dutch light

De Kroon started his career in the late 1970s as a cameraman for the Polygoon news. Learning to ride a bicycle, he calls that period, so that later on he could confidently focus on the content of his work. He then took an example from the great Dutch documentary makers – Joris Ivens, Herman van der Horst, Bert Haanstra – who alternated his own work with commissioned films. For years he made ‘prestigious commissioned films with great artistic freedom’ for the Toonder Geesink Multifilm studio. The anniversary film for the 150th anniversary of the Dutch Railways, for example (Cadence1989), several documentaries for a drinks producer and another big anniversary film, On the way for Rijkswaterstaat. His breakthrough came after the turn of the century, with Golden Calf winner and public success Dutch light (2003), in which he examined the light captured by the great Dutch landscape painters.

Silence of the Tides stands out because of its very own cinematic language. De Kroon can grumble cheerfully about the way in which other documentaries take the viewer by the hand. With ‘voice-overs or pieces of beautifully composed music that let you feel exactly what the state of affairs is at that moment’. He prefers a ‘purely cinematographic approach in which image and sound tell the story’. And loves the idea of ​​a viewer in front of a large cinema screen being forced into an active viewing position.

Silence of the Tides is built according to strict rules, he says. A kind of commandment, actually. ‘So the camera was not allowed to move, not to zoom nicely. In a nature reserve that is visually attractive in itself, you are otherwise quickly inclined to Schönfilmerei.’ Drone shots were banned. ‘Too fashionable too: I think in a few years you will be able to recognize all documentaries from this era by their drone images. In any case, the wind is often too strong for a drone on the mudflats.’

Horizon

This apparently sober approach makes you aware of the small, subtle changes that take place before your eyes, says De Kroon. He describes it as radical observation. ‘You can also call it humble perception. I see all kinds of things happening that fascinate me, I would like to share that with the viewer, without adding much myself. The 17th-century Dutch landscape painters also had a humble perception. They translated that famous Dutch light in a technically very skilful way and added hardly anything to it.’ The difference between his documentary and the painters: with them the horizon was low in the frame, so that there was plenty of room for the famous light. De Kroon invariably sets the horizon high, so that the mudflats – ‘the mud’ – gets all the attention.

The sound in Silence of the Tides received extra care. ‘The sound on the Wadden is so varied, so subtle, sometimes so soft and so loud. That is also a reason not to include a voice-over or music. Just the sound of the postal train: the rails hum, you can hear the irregularities in the wheels, the loose axles. To properly capture all sounds, we have placed microphones in the train. In most films the sound supports the image, here it often happens that the image supports the sound.’

There is another peculiarity: Silence of the Tides is made in Dolby Atmos, a sound system in which 64 sound tracks can be supplied. ‘The system is often used for the big blockbusters with a lot of action, while it is suitable for a more subtle sound design. You can place each sound separately in space, up to the flight direction of one bird. You hear it all around you. The sound also gives you the feeling that you are there.’