A family’s chilling past and present intermingle

Four generations of women occupy same home in different eras in ‘Sound of Falling,’

- TIM GRIERSON

There are ghosts inhabiting “Sound of Falling” — you just need to know where to look for them.

German director Mascha Schilinski's astonishing second feature could scarcely be more ambitious as it offers an impressionistic portrait of four young women who take turns residing in the same house over roughly 110 years.

But where other movies are overly precious while collecting the invisible string that binds characters from different time periods, “Sound of Falling” is stark and unsentimental. Covering the early 20th century through the present, gliding back and forth between eras with the deftest touch, the film views the living as merely the latest iteration of a fragile species that has been constantly struggling against unseen forces that drag it down, generation after generation. So many of the movie's characters are long dead, their hopes and dreams now erased, while we strut and fret our hour upon the stage.