Review: Into Great Silence

The monastic life-style has always intrigued me. From the self-discipline of daily rituals to the stripping away of everything one owns, the faith and dedication a monk uses is noble and true. Or maybe the attraction lies in the fact that you get to dress like a Jedi. Whether I could have survived, is one question. Since most that enter such monasteries never last but a few years. But the more pertinent question is: Could I have survived psychologically? I would probably best the psychology… but definitely not the silence.

German filmmaker Philip Gröning apparently spent about six months living as a monk before attempting to capture their lives in film. And his patience and persistence paid off. Into Great Silence, the documentary about the Grande Chartreuse Monastery in the French Alps lived up to my expectations. The silence associated with the lives of these monks was captured by the endless silence (2:40 hours) of the film. That in itself is a story.

Apparently, the filmmaker went to the abbot to discuss his idea of a film about the monks. The abbot responded somewhat positively and said that he would get back to him. Reply he did… 16 years later! Time passing through an hourglass.

The filming was a study in time itself. Gröning captured light and darkness, color and shapes extraordinarily well. It was like watching an infinite number of slides merging one into the next effortlessly. As the viewer slows down and moves into the world of the monastery, the endless silence changes the sounds of the simple task into a chorus of movement and meditation.

The entire quarter moved towards being able to take the gift of transcendental film. Fridays have been an interesting ride and truly a gift perfectly placed at the end of a long week of studies. Being able to slow down and observe the world through new eyes of a filmmaker was not only a gift of transcendence, but a gift of transportation away from the hustle and bustle of a seminarian life and into a tranquility of quiet reflection.

Review: The Wind Will Carry Us

Contrasting the simple beauty of life itself with the absurd intrusions and blinders of modern deadlines and technology, Abbas Kiarostami presents a film that is both compassionate and ironic. The Wind Will Carry Us follows a group of media professionals, identified early on as “engineers,” who travel to a small village in Iran.

We later discover that the “engineers” were really in town to document the archaic and brutal grieving rituals the local townspeople submit themselves at times of mourning. But along the way, the viewer is invited to experience the new world just as the town’s visitors do. The film is an investigation – a philosophical examination into the nature of man, existence and civilization.

The story of the engineer is counter-pointed against the lives of the people he encounters: a young boy who becomes his guide, a laborer who discusses the restrictive roles of women, a pregnant woman who shelters them, and the village elder, or teacher, who surmises the reason of their visit.

Kiarostami has a wonderful ability to take the rustic and mundane of everyday life in a normal rural Middle Eastern town – and show the mysterious and beautiful moments as poetry. The script frequently recites poetry throughout the film while the images display equally deeply poetic lines. And the continual play of the “engineer” having to drive to a mountain top to find a cellular signal is the perfect metaphor for the stories plot line of the modern age set against an old world where modern invention is not needed. The film is a beautiful tale of contrast that is translated by subtitles but not in need on translation of truth.