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20080409-the-sight-of-silence-by-ag-harmonIn a film without words (or more precisely, with only two minutes of them), it’s a tautology to say that the visual experience overwhelms all other cinematic considerations. If the cinematographer doesn’t do his job here, then the experience is no better than thumbing through a very long coffee table book. But after the first fifteen minutes of such an undertaking, it becomes apparent that there’s more at stake than just filming sights worth seeing; there has to be a point to the silence. Otherwise, it’s just a gimmick, something film school types might do to imply a fraudulent depth. So you better have a purpose for keeping your mouth shut throughout the movie—say, maybe, something like a vow made to God never to open it again.

Into Great Silence is director Phillip Groening’s award-winning documentary on the Grande Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps. With a few exceptions, the only sounds in the film are unvoiced: bells rung from church towers and from around cows’ necks, the rush of water down mountain streams and across metal platters; the sweeping of leaves and dust; the cutting of wood, of cloth, and of hair barbered from the tonsured monks’ heads. Lovely as all this might be, at first I feared I’d grow bored at some point and guiltily fast forward to the end. Besides, was this active film “making” or passive film “developing”? How was this not just a quotidian recording, as easily caught by cameras on tripods as by a filmmaker manipulating the shots?

Groening overcomes all such objections through a variety of techniques: the way he films, the subjects he chooses, and the context he sets. The venue alone, a remote paradise as lovely in snow as in leaf, is done honor by the Norman architecture of the monastery: expansive white walls; tall, mansard roofs. The humility towards the ancient establishment is exhibited in a scenic painterliness: patience is taken with every shot, giving each angle of doorway, cloister, and cell the time it deserves.

The approach complements the Carthusian monks’ lives, because in the silence, each thing has a chance to step out, to take upon itself the glory it was meant to have. In the way of paradox, it becomes clear how much more can be heard, and seen, in silence. Candlelight burning, the rustle of woolen sleeves and cowls, the knock of stone placed upon stone, pages of an old missal, turned–each sound rings clearer and each sight gains more shape, stepping out from their familiarity for a newfound claim upon our attentions–as though to say, “Look now; see, finally, what I am.” A scene of a skiing expedition down a snow covered mountainside–the monks like gulls sweeping through cloudscapes–is a visual and spiritual delight.

At times, Groening chooses a changed perspective: a filtered shot through a grainy, indistinct lens, which suggests the viewer is removed from the experience of viewing; a reflection upon the reflection. This too is in keeping with the monk’s lives, in pattern with what they hope to achieve in this, the most peculiar of worldly walks.

Groening also interrupts the daily chores and recitations of the office to focus on solitary faces. And when he does so, a myth is shattered: these are individuals, not gaunt-faced clones. They have only chosen a common path, not a common identity. Their voices are heard as well, as the monks are allowed to talk during a weekly trek through the Alps. But voices after such silence confront the viewer with a truth: speech is best when performed after reflection; otherwise, it is only more noise, with little to communicate.

At regular intervals, there are passages of scripture and commentary, to remind us of the monks’ purpose. They are after something beyond sight or sound, and the film leaves the impression they have found it in this unique way, so incomprehensible to most. The definition of what is possible, of what the human heart can want, is all the larger for them, since they are not angels, but only men. This is not heaven, but still only earth.

Which begs the question: what are angels then? And what is heaven?

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