Director/writer: Carlos Reygadas
Photography: Alexis Zabe
Music: Jacques Brel
Editor: Natalia Lopez
Cast: Cornelio Wall, Miriam Toews, Maria Pankratz, Peter Wall, Elizabeth Fehr, Jacobo Klassen
[Spoilers?] A reviewer at IMDb, Serge Bosque, issued a warning about Silent Light back in 2007: "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." I will note the movie is presently available to stream on Vudu (with ads), but the caution is probably appropriate, and never mind for the moment about covid. The problem is not mayhem and gore, but the practical opposite. Silent Light is radiantly beautiful and slow, over two hours long, with long, long takes and limited dialogue. I know from experience people in theaters can have a real problem with that.
If I have any problem with Silent Light it is more its obvious source as a kind of remake of Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1955 movie Ordet. The two movies happen to share a lot of plot points: a large and isolated family working a farm, a conservative religious sect (or cult, depending on your view), plodding faith and various questions about that faith, and most notably the death and subsequent resurrection of a family matriarch, rendered with an absolute minimum of special effects. Is that a spoiler? I'm still not sure how it's supposed to work with art movies. The resurrection just happens, somehow, in both Ordet and Silent Light. These scenes veer close to a feeling of playacting. Resurrection from the dead is certainly a narrative twist—but is the twist itself the mere point of all this? If so, sincere apologies. But even before that climax you have to already be thinking of Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky, and other filmmakers who take their religious ecstasies slow and apocalyptic.
[Spoilers?] A reviewer at IMDb, Serge Bosque, issued a warning about Silent Light back in 2007: "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." I will note the movie is presently available to stream on Vudu (with ads), but the caution is probably appropriate, and never mind for the moment about covid. The problem is not mayhem and gore, but the practical opposite. Silent Light is radiantly beautiful and slow, over two hours long, with long, long takes and limited dialogue. I know from experience people in theaters can have a real problem with that.
If I have any problem with Silent Light it is more its obvious source as a kind of remake of Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1955 movie Ordet. The two movies happen to share a lot of plot points: a large and isolated family working a farm, a conservative religious sect (or cult, depending on your view), plodding faith and various questions about that faith, and most notably the death and subsequent resurrection of a family matriarch, rendered with an absolute minimum of special effects. Is that a spoiler? I'm still not sure how it's supposed to work with art movies. The resurrection just happens, somehow, in both Ordet and Silent Light. These scenes veer close to a feeling of playacting. Resurrection from the dead is certainly a narrative twist—but is the twist itself the mere point of all this? If so, sincere apologies. But even before that climax you have to already be thinking of Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky, and other filmmakers who take their religious ecstasies slow and apocalyptic.
The remake aspect is not actually that hard to forgive, however, and I liked the picture even more when I caught up with it again recently. It is as exotic to a US viewer as Dreyer's European northlands ways, or even more so, focusing on a Mennonite community in Mexico that speaks Plautdietsch, a Russian dialect. Bosque goes on: "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."
Yes—it just is one of those movies. Director and writer Carlos Reygadas zags when anyone else would zig, all in narrative slow-motion. He opens and closes the picture on amazing time-lapse sequences of a dawn and dusk, respectively, which trace the wheeling stars of the night even as the distant hillside can be detected against their movement. They take minutes. He holds the camera still even when people move out of frame and we have to put together what is happening from audio cues. His camera likes to look at things for a long time.
Reygadas has also constructed an interesting and unique community in these Mennonites. I have no idea about the accuracy but what we see are old-fashioned ways in terms of dress, manners, and daily rituals alongside farming methods that are distinctly modern, dependent on arrays of heavy machinery. We see dairy cattle being milked, for example. We see pickup trucks, but I cannot recall as many horses, if any.
The crisis of faith is that Johan (Cornelio Wall) has fallen in love with Marianne (Maria Pankratz) who is not his wife. That's Esther (Miriam Toews). Johan and Esther have at least six kids but that's not going to stop a ripe old middle-age crisis from blowing up. Johan, who we learn has been open about all this with Esther, is in a good deal of pain trying to sort it out. Esther is in a good deal of pain too. Johan's talk about soulmates and the woman he was intended for and all that sounds like anyone I've known in their 40s having an affair outside their marriage. They don't appear to be as much fun as you'd think, even if you're a Mennonite.
The picture then proceeds to its appointed Ordet rounds. The death of Esther from heartbreak is particularly well done, on a road trip taking place on a sweltering hot day threatening a storm, which duly whips up. Reygadas knew the kind of day he was looking for—a central plains thunderstorm—and he got it. It's just absolutely stunning, though I suspect when it gets to the actual downpour itself a few extra hoses were involved.
As with Ordet, my take on the ending of Silent Light seems to vary with my moods. This unlikely resurrection—from the casket in the church at the memorial in both cases—has worked as a powerful moment and has also looked quite silly. I will say that, for me, the best version of this type of story is the 1906 short story "Lazarus" by Russian writer Leonid Andreyev. You'd have to rank all the gospels ahead of these movies as a matter of courtesy. of course. But Silent Light is notably a pleasure to look at, once acclimated to its rhythms as Bosque cautions, and as with Ordet I'm willing to go along with the suspension of disbelief. Definitely worth a (patient) look.
Yes—it just is one of those movies. Director and writer Carlos Reygadas zags when anyone else would zig, all in narrative slow-motion. He opens and closes the picture on amazing time-lapse sequences of a dawn and dusk, respectively, which trace the wheeling stars of the night even as the distant hillside can be detected against their movement. They take minutes. He holds the camera still even when people move out of frame and we have to put together what is happening from audio cues. His camera likes to look at things for a long time.
Reygadas has also constructed an interesting and unique community in these Mennonites. I have no idea about the accuracy but what we see are old-fashioned ways in terms of dress, manners, and daily rituals alongside farming methods that are distinctly modern, dependent on arrays of heavy machinery. We see dairy cattle being milked, for example. We see pickup trucks, but I cannot recall as many horses, if any.
The crisis of faith is that Johan (Cornelio Wall) has fallen in love with Marianne (Maria Pankratz) who is not his wife. That's Esther (Miriam Toews). Johan and Esther have at least six kids but that's not going to stop a ripe old middle-age crisis from blowing up. Johan, who we learn has been open about all this with Esther, is in a good deal of pain trying to sort it out. Esther is in a good deal of pain too. Johan's talk about soulmates and the woman he was intended for and all that sounds like anyone I've known in their 40s having an affair outside their marriage. They don't appear to be as much fun as you'd think, even if you're a Mennonite.
The picture then proceeds to its appointed Ordet rounds. The death of Esther from heartbreak is particularly well done, on a road trip taking place on a sweltering hot day threatening a storm, which duly whips up. Reygadas knew the kind of day he was looking for—a central plains thunderstorm—and he got it. It's just absolutely stunning, though I suspect when it gets to the actual downpour itself a few extra hoses were involved.
As with Ordet, my take on the ending of Silent Light seems to vary with my moods. This unlikely resurrection—from the casket in the church at the memorial in both cases—has worked as a powerful moment and has also looked quite silly. I will say that, for me, the best version of this type of story is the 1906 short story "Lazarus" by Russian writer Leonid Andreyev. You'd have to rank all the gospels ahead of these movies as a matter of courtesy. of course. But Silent Light is notably a pleasure to look at, once acclimated to its rhythms as Bosque cautions, and as with Ordet I'm willing to go along with the suspension of disbelief. Definitely worth a (patient) look.
I have my limits with slow cinema but have you ever seen Werner Herzog's 1971 film, Fata Morgana, the mirage? In my memory it's a plane taking off and landing on an airport in an austere desert landscape in slow-motion for 90 minutes. A puzzling flashback seared to my brainpan. And it had some strange narration I looked up later to find out was a Mayan creation myth. It was sort of beyond good and bad. I can't say I liked it but it was in its random way unforgettable.
ReplyDeleteHaven't seen it! Sounds like an interesting but potentially deadly slog.
ReplyDelete