Tears of Knowing: A Keen Drama About the First Brush With Truth

There is a special place in heaven for the really-not-much-happens films. Miles Marti’s Tears of Knowing is destined for it. One morning in the life of a kindergartener, glimpsed in seven brief, near silent minutes, makes for a riveting narrative of the first loss of innocence.

Ignorance is bliss, and knowledge is mostly worth the pain of learning. The wonderful protagonist, Ava (Soleila Shea) seems to understand this instinctively and takes the pain for the value it forges. One morning when her father (Ron L. Palmer) is forced to take her to school early, Ava discovers both the finitude of life and the deceptions of those we idolise. She watches her god die.

Shot with a handheld camera, the film approaches the story with a blunt, documentary style realism. It allows Ava her stoic silence when the time calls for it. The sonic layout is rich with detail; we are Ava’s witnesses and confidantes as she explores a secret world. Her classroom, empty and unsupervised. She can walk around as she likes, observe the class guinea pig without having to wait for her turn, even leave a surprise present for her homeroom teacher, Ms Price (Ana Price).

The brilliance of the film is really the characterisation of Ms Price. Skirting the edge of visual absence, it is her hollowness, her insincerity that define her presence. What Ava learns, what disillusions her, is not that those we know and love can and will die. It is the lie, its smooth and unforgivably unfazed execution. Ms Price does not care. For a kindergartener, and in truth, for just about everyone, other people’s indifference is one of the higher heartbreaks—even more when it comes from someone whose job it is to care.

And though an additional shot or two may have corroborated and intensified the significance of the change within Ava, the film, as it stands, ends with a flourish of sharp censure that single-handedly restores some balance against saccharine representations of children on-screen.

Tears of Knowing is a splendid use of silence and gesture. No one has to say anything for love to die and be excised. And in place of morality, we are presented a binary of knowledge and failure. It may or may not accord power, the film seems to say, but knowledge is the first goal all of us should reach for and the last comfort any of us can hope for.