SILENCE LIKE GLASS

Set in New York City, SILENCE LIKE GLASS tells the story of Amy. A talented ballet dancer of 19, she is poised for a glorious career. However, she has recently been taking pain pills and not feeling 100%.

During a grand performance, Amy pirouettes center stage, then collapses. Rushed to a hospital in upstate New York, she is examined and goes through a battery of tests and scans.

Amy’s first night in the room scares her. She cannot understand why she has to be roomed with a brash, foul-mouthed girl whose hair has fallen out. Then she finds out why: the completely bald girl is dying of leukemia, and the therapy made her hair fall out.

Amy is confused by the events of the past few days. It hasn’t occurred to her what is really happening until the chief surgeon comes into the room to discuss her condition. She has lymph cancer, with almost no chance of survival.

Amy asks when she can resume dancing. The doctor says never. Only then does it grab her that life is over. “This can’t happen to a 19 year old,” she cries out. However, it does and we watch her die for the rest of the movie.

At first, Amy puts up a brick wall. No one can come in to her feelings and pain. Eventually, she gets to know other girls on the ward, all of whom are terminally ill. They share stories, talk about boys and love, but in a fatalistic sense, without any comfort from God.

We follow her through the weeks, but even when she grasps the significance of her impending death, it is a nihilistic realization. She will die and that’s it. However, that isn’t it. It is here that this film could have made a statement about the love of Christ and its comfort as we approach death. “Where, O death, is your sting,” has often been attributed to William Shakespeare, but actually is statement found in I Corinthians 15:55. It is thus comforting knowledge and a fact that the death of these diseased, sinful bodies is a triumph over death for those who have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and who will live forever with God in heaven.

SILENCE LIKE GLASS is a difficult movie to watch, with these young women dying of cancer. It is a depressing, though realistic look at dying and death, but movies with more impact and sensitivity have been made about this subject.