Into Great Silence

Espektro — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 16:14:50 +0000

Hello critters!. Documentaries offers most of the time the POV of the author instead the reality they pretend to show us. Editing is wizardry, it can rise or crack impressions in the audience by using music, dialogues and video in the right order to bang your mind. But for the new Philip Gröning's film, this is not the case.

INTO THE GREAT SILENCE is a documentary about the life inside a charthusian monastery in the french alps. The project started 20 years ago and now is rolling on film fests arround the world, coming soon to your nearest theater I asume (see the youtube US trailer at the bottom of this post). Most of the critics qualify this as an enchanting, hypnotic, introspective movie, a travel trough time and nature using the silence as your vehicle. Only a few gregorian chants and short dialogues inserted into a 3 hour film (yup, 3 hours of silence... incredible isn't? but not boring at all) full of close ups to the life style of this millenary monastery. The most radicals qualify it as a catholic movie, but it goes beyond the labels and has nothing to do with dogmas. Maybe works as a counterpoint for JESUS CAMP (posted by Fableforge) showing a different perception about religion and the human relations with the existence sourrounding us. Not fanatism, but a personal compromise with God. Not about heaven or hell, but life on earth.

Gröning walked the path of the true documentarist by inserting himself into the reality he wanted to portrait on the film instead of just watching from the above, living as a chartusian himself and acomplishing with all the routines and rules inside the monastery. He concludes there's a huge space for individuality inside the monastery, despiting the first impression you could have about a medieval order with medieval rules surviving in the XXI century.

If you have the chance, rent it, download it (paying for it of course) or go to your theater. Watching a film turns into a personal experiencie, and this is a very deep one.

http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/