Silent Light

I urge readers to watch this.

The story is touching and human. A family man who is seized by a new inexplicable love that tells him the old love, what he used to think as love, was merely peace and habit, and yet he can't be sure. Is the new one merely passion? Does he have a right to betray the trust? Deny himself happiness? It is the most profoundly troubling question that I imagine can arise in a lifetime.

The film is merely one possible outcome, how making a choice can upset the whole universe, the question itself is much more difficult and deep. If you're 18 the gravity of it might not register, you still have second and third chances ahead of you. But after a certain age, I imagine it becomes entirely cosmic, entirely about choosing the last person you're going to know and love.

My only quibble about this is the stifled Germanic presence all through the film. I'm talking about the deliberately inexpressive faces, pauses and careful poses, people arranged in symmetries around objects, none of which is artful in my world. Well art can be anything so it is not that so much as choosing the world you're going to live in and I'll have none of that stylized pouting in my home, suffering can never be an aesthetic.

Yet in this hard shell there is a softly pounding heart of beauty.

One is how this harsh German presence is softened by the afterglow of a sweeter sun and rolling Mexican landscape, which is where the film takes place. Mellowed in this way it brings to the fore a quality I admire in Protestants: simple lives, joy in austerity and nonattachment. Though it came from historical necessity, it's still the closest thing to Zen we've known in Europe.

The other thing is even simpler yet that much more beautiful. The film is shot in long quiet sweeps of ordinary nothing, those who keep in touch know I am frequently vexed by this technique because it so often becomes merely about style instead of sculpted insight, a garment worn a certain way.

Transcendent vision in film, which is at its most powerful, is about unconcealing a fuller sense of world, broader horizons. It cannot be a proclamation of love but a gesture that embodies what it means to; words are just too easy and cheap, whereas the visible action is itself the commitment.

Here we have something that is elegant and simple in just the right measure.

In the story we have new love that extends from the old, a new feeling, new beginnings one after the other, not always the one desired or anticipated.

All through the film we have a dozen or so subtle metaphors about just this feeling of unconcealing a new world, of reaching an end which is only the start of the next landscape.

My favorite are the following two. A combine threshes a wheatfield, a violent, clustered image of uprooting, only to arrive at the end of the field at an open horizon of fields. And even greater, during the river scene, the man and soon-to-be betrayed wife embrace as their children wash below, still close, their bodies leave the frame and we're left for several lingering moments in the hazy unfocused space of their absence, only for the camera to slowly find and focus on a blossoming flower.

Breathtaking!

So when she departs in the end and miraculously comes to again, it the same inner blossom from nothing, call it a sense of the mother still being in the world. The world does not end so long as we keep this anticipation of presence, fields to see after this one, new people to love, never bogged down by loss. The hazy landscape of seeming nothingness already contains the flower, in that scene it is neither there as we don't see it nor not there as it is there to be found, and this all has its meditative sense.

I'm glad for this film. From now on, whenever it happens that I have to try and illustrate the Buddhist notion of emptiness, or shunyata, I will reach for this one scene.

Something to meditate upon.

With Stellet Licht, Mexican director Carlos Reygadas follows a different path from his previous films. Reygadas tells a very simple and age-old story: the choice of a man between two women. However, it's his unique vision of life what makes this film stand out from the hundreds of films made with this subject matter.

A contained and wonderful Cornelio Wall delivers a range of feelings, resting almost entirely in his expressive eyes. His excellent performance fits perfectly with the quiet and slow pace of the film. The rest of the cast is also great, with really natural performances throughout the film.

The cinematography and editing are also gorgeous, developing an unique pace and look to the film that would have bored in any other film. While the pace of the film is extremely slow, the audience gets used to it, preventing boredom from affecting the viewers, as it normally occurs with other slowly-paced films.

The film happens in the secluded Menonite settlement of the beautiful state of Chihuahua, introducing us to a world completely different from ours, but the universal feeling of the story makes us realize that, regardless of the differences between different groups of people, we are all similar.

Silent Light (2007)

I don't think you should pre-judge this film by director Carlos Reygadas's known style--lots of long, matter of fact takes, and mostly amateur actors. This is a Mexican film, and some Spanish language appears, but most of it is in a Mennonite dialect, a kind of country German carried over by Russian immigrants. Seeing these simple people from the inside is a large part of the interest here, even though it's not a documentary. Reygadas makes it a point to get the pace of their lives, which is apparently very slow!

It's odd to see such deliberate photography in the mold of Ozu, with the still camera and the offscreen activity now and then, and to realize how difficult it is to pull that off. Only because it doesn't quite work here. It becomes an affectation, even so that the curvature of the widescreen (and anamorphic, I think) photography becomes a distraction. The approach, however, makes for a very quiet movie, viscerally, and because of that it penetrates the characters and gets to some moving issues.

It's a deeply felt story, for sure, and that was enough to make me want to watch it. But there were times when I felt like I was sitting it out through conviction. It almost forced you to feel sad, and to share the loneliness of these country folk who struggle on their farms not to survive, but to understand love and meaning. Heavy stuff, and laid out with amazing seriousness. And also shown in clear, appreciative views.

You will get the feeling sometimes that there ought to be someone out in this forlorn landscape who is happy, and who has some sense of quick wit. But apparently not! It's a despondent experience, and that actually is what I liked about it. But I'm not sure it is enough, this drawn out sadness alone, with lots of ambient droning sounds (very vivid) overwhelms the apparent "plot" of a love that isn't appropriate.

Is it good? I think some people will totally love it. I'd recommend it for those who want to really lose themselves in another world, in realistic and un adorned terms, a world that is unspectacular on the surface, and very probing and beautiful within.

This is certainly not a film for everybody and I will be careful in who I recommend this movie to. It is challenging because it is very unsatisfying to the 5 senses we are used to (over)feed. This movie is like meditating, you need to surrender to it, ignore what your mind is telling you about what a movie should be, surrender to the slowness first and then to the lack of almost everything we are normally used to in a movie. There is so little you can chew on, no acting, inhibited emotions, no laughter, even the acclaimed picture is unsatisfying (don't see this movie for that reason). Everything is internal, barely reaching the surface. If you can tune in though, like in a meditation, you will become ultra sensitive, sense the subtle and begin to enjoy. Some scenes may even totally fill your spirit. One word of caution though, if you intend to see this movie in a theatre: it is very likely that some people will become uncomfortable and leave, keep talking, protest etc... which makes it even more difficult to watch it with serenity so renting it as a DVD may be a more suitable option. If you are the kind of person enjoying a walk in the countryside contemplating nature without talking you'll probably enjoy this movie. If you prefer talking or being entertained then chances are that you will not.

Can light have sound? So what is silent light? Something surreal, somehow related to the hymn "Silent night"? The intriguing answers are provided in the film to the patient, thoughtful viewer. This is not a film for the impatient viewer. "Starlight" (accessible cosmic wonders) begins and ends the film—silence dominates the soundtrack, except for sounds of crickets, lowing of cattle, and an occasional bird cry.

This opening shot sets the tone for a film made with non-professional actors. The film won the Jury's Grand Prize at Cannes 2007. It is a spectacular film experience for any viewer who loves cinema. This is my first Reygadas film and I have become an admirer of this young man.

Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas writes his own scripts. He is one of the few filmmakers of importance today who does that—-alongside Spain's Pedro Almodovar and Japan's Naomi Kawase.

Reygadas' stunning movie "Silent Light" is centered on a collapsing marriage within a religious Mennonite community in Mexico, speaking not Spanish (the language of Mexico) but a rare European language (Plautdietsch) that mixes German and Dutch words, leading up to the eventual renewal and strengthening of this fragile family. Reygadas begins the film with a 6-minute long time-lapse photography of dawn breaking to the sounds of nature and ends the film with twilight merging into the night.

The opening shot was lost on many viewers; a noisy viewer kept talking three minutes into the film, unaware that the film was running, until I had to reveal this surprising fact to him at the 12th International Film festival of Kerala. The film's opening shot was so stunning that after the 6th minute the audience who grasped what was happening began clapping, having savored the effect. The last time I recall a similar involuntary reaction from an audience was when Godfrey Reggio's "Koyaanisqatsi" was screened decades ago in Mumbai at another International Film Festival.

There is something magical, supernatural in nature if we care to reflect on a daily occurrence. There is a touch of director Andrei Tarkovsky in Reygadas' "Silent Light" as he captures the magical, fleeting moments in life that all of us encounter but do not register as such. There is a touch of director Terrence Mallick's cinema as he connects human actions with nature (a heartbroken wife runs into a glen and collapses trying to clutch a tree trunk). And there is a touch of director Ermanno Olmi in the endearing rustic pace of the film. Whether he was influenced by these giants of cinema I do not know—but many sequences recall the works of those directors.

That the film recalls Carl Dreyer's "Ordet" (1955) is an indisputable fact. "Ordet" was based on a play by a Danish playwright Kaj Munk. Reygadas film is based on his own script that almost resembles a silent film because of the sparse dialog. Both films are on religious themes, on falling in love outside marriage, and leading up to an eventual miracle. Reygadas uses these basic religious and abstract ingredients to weave a modern story that is as powerful as Dreyer's classic work by adding the realistic and accessible components of nature—automated milking of milch cows (without milking, the cows would be in distress) and a family bathing scene—do seem to be included as daily occurrences that have a cyclical similarity to the main plot—the collapse and rebuilding of a marriage. Reygadas' cinema invites the viewer to look at nature captured by the film and discover parallels to the story-line. This film is one of the richest examples of cinema today that combines intelligently a structured screenplay, creative sound management, and marvelous photography that soothes your eyes, ears and mind.

Early in the film, the "family" is introduced sitting around a table in silent prayer before partaking a meal. The silence is broken by the tick-tock of the clock. The children are obviously unaware of the tension in the room, except that they would like to eat the food in front of them. The adults are under tension. When the head of the family remains alone on the table (symbolic statement) he breaks into uncontrollable sobs. He gets up to stop the loud clock (symbolic) that evidently disturbed the silent prayer. This action becomes important if we realize that the clock never bothered the family silent prayers before. All is not well. Time has to stand still.

Composition of scenes of scenes in the film remind you of Terrence Mallick—the balancing visuals of men and children sitting on bales of hay on trailer—again recalling a cosmic balancing force in life Both "Silent Light" and "Ordet" revolve around a miracle, where a woman's love for a male lover and tears for his dead wife leads to calming a turbulent marriage. The film is not religious but the Mennonite world is religious. Religion remains in the background, In the foreground is love between individuals, lovers, husbands, wives, sons, parents, et al. What the film does is nudge the viewer to perceive a mystical, cosmic world, a world beyond the earth we live in, which is enveloped in love. There is a cosmic orbit that the director wants his viewers to note—similar to the erring husband driving his truck in circles as though he was in a trance on the farm, while listening to music. Mennonite children who are not exposed to TVs seem to enjoy the comedy of Belgian actor and singer Jacques Brel in a closed van. While Reygadas seems to be concentrating on the peculiarities of a fringe religious group, the universal truths about children's behavior and adult behavior captured in the film zoom out beyond the world of Mennonites. They are universal.

The film begins in silence and ends in silence against a backdrop of stars in the night. The indirect reference to the "Silent night" hymn is unmistakable. For the patient viewer here is a film to enjoy long after the film ends.