Steven Greydanus reviews Into the Great Silence
No interview footage furnishes psychological insights into the dispositions or motivations of the monks (apart from a single brief homiletical reflection late in the film). In contrast to nearly wordless nature documentaries like Atlantis, Microcosmos and Winged Migration — or for that matter essentially the whole history of silent film — there is no nondiegetic music to provide emotional cues and mood support to the audience.
The result is more than a documentary of monastic life. It is a transcendent meditation on the human pursuit of meaning, on man as a religious and social creature; on the form and function of symbols and ritual and tradition; on the rhythm of work and prayer, day and night, winter and spring.
The silence is not total; the monks must speak, to celebrate the liturgy and other special functions, to accomplish certain necessary tasks, and on weekly outings from the monastery to socialize and discuss their life together. But if the silence is not absolute, it is still the point of reference; it gives meaning to the words, not the other way around. “The symbols are not to be questioned — we are,” says one monk during one of those weekly outings. The monks don’t question the silence, it questions them — and us, if we let it.
This style of filmmaking makes demanding viewing, and takes some adjusting to. Yet as Into Great Silence progresses, a mysterious thing happens. Like the rule of the monastery, which the monks experience as a path of joy and liberation and inner peace, the film’s very austerity becomes the bearer of something more. Almost imperceptibly, rigor and discipline are swallowed up in beauty, harmony and transcendence.
“This is what a monastery is,” Gröning said. “It’s getting rid of all the superfluous stuff, and then things become much more transparent — time becomes transparent, objects too. There’s this transparency, this inner freedom that comes, which is felt as joy, of course.”
Monasticism is common to many religious traditions, and much of the film would translate quite well for Buddhist audiences, say. At the same time, Into Great Silence bears the stamp of the specifically Christian, Catholic, and Western character of its subjects, and for audiences of similar heritage the director feels the film will have a special personal resonance.
“This is a film about contemplative life in Christian, Western culture,” Gröning said. “So we can go into that much deeper than when we see a film about a Tibetan monastery. I don’t have memories of being a Tibetan monk at the age of four, because I wasn’t, you know? But I do have memories of a priest telling me something when I was six or seven. So a film that is showing the possibility of contemplation, meditation, inner peace, inner freedom in our culture, for people from a Western background, is something that’s going to be deeply moving.”
Via Fr. Finigan of Hermeneutic of Continuity a brief (2+ minutes) video (seems as if it was part of a news program) about Portugese Carthusians at Évora
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