Silent Light / Featuring Cornelio Wall – Maria Pankratz – Miriam Toews – Peter Wall / Written and Directed by Carlos Reygadas / (Possible spoilers in the end notes)
Cinema no longer has the cultural primacy it once did. Our multiplicity of content creation and delivery forms, evolving so quickly, prevents one medium from being it.
Yet, at age only 100 years or so, the potential of moving pictures has barely begun to be found. I’m reminded of this while watching ‘Silent Night’, on at the Belcourt from March 6th to the 9th.
A seemingly simple tale of a married man in passionate love with a woman not his wife, ‘Silent Life’ contains not just the most beautiful opening sequence I’ve seen in films – it quiets the soul with a continual progression of idyllic shots of nature, and man in nature.
Watching this film, this reverie, you realise the empty quality of most all commercial cinema. The hollow, collapse of imagination found in transcripted films like ‘Watchmen’ becomes so apparent as to be unbearable when watching a film as poetic as ‘Silent Light’.
Now of course one would usually offer a warning here – that it’s not a picture for everyone. With it’s ‘several minute long takes’, lack of dialogue, and Northern Mexico Mennonite setting (!) this picture won’t appeal to the ‘Marley and Me’ set, or those cramming into theatres to see ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’. But I’m not going to offer that warning. Because I think every adult who loves movies should see this film.
And if you hem and haw and shift in your seat and are bored and wonder, “when is the action going to start?”, you’ve got to relax. And imagine that cinema doesn’t have to be so ‘cutty’, that the act of going to the movies can be the same as going to a concert, or an art gallery.
Relax.
And let yourself become transported – carried away – to a different world – of life, and nature, and just being.
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‘Silent Night’ is at the Belcourt Theatre, Nashville from March 6th to the 9th, see it if you can.
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An additional note: there’s been much ‘hoo-haa’ made over the ending of this picture. Is it a homage to Dreyer or straight-rip-off, etc, (and in fact the Mistress works at an ice-cream parlour – what’s a popular brand of Ice Cream? Dreyer’s. Ahhh). The arguement about homage v. rip-off is nonsensical – we all take if we need it – if you don’t take what we need in art you’re a fool; but I do wish the film’s ending was different. I would have preferred for the Mistress to kiss the Wife on the forehead and then cut to the last shot, (by-passing all that other stuff – you’ll know what I mean when you see it). A small complaint. In a very big film.
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One more note: Sound. The sound not just of crickets, animals in the brush. But of a man’s tears falling on a woman’s body. Nature. Brilliant.
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