“The Silence” of this film’s title could refer to many things. It might be the deathly quiet of the home of a mother whose 11-year-old daughter has been dead for 23 years. It might be what the parents of another missing girl hear from the police — almost nothing. It might refer to the man who watched his friend rape and murder that first girl and then dump her body. He watched in horror, but he never said a word, not to his friend, not to the police and not to the mother who wondered if her daughter would ever come home. This is the worst silence in the film, but it’s not the most surprising one. That belongs to a silence that obsesses the murderer and finally leads to the second crime, decades later.

“The Silence,” of course, was likely named to capture all these things, and more. The point of this German thriller isn’t to guess whodunit, though there might be a little confusion on that point at first. Instead, it follows the aftermath of violent crime on all those who are left, including the man who committed it. Baran bo Odar’s tense and taut film does not ask the viewer to empathize with the horrible man who’s responsible for a horrible act. But it does bring up questions of responsibility most of us would rather not face.