Into Great Silence

OK, that's a natural segue, right? Violent anti-terrorism, bombs, guns...Carthusian monks.

Well, too bad, because actually the monks came first (in sooo many ways!).

The Clam and I went and saw the foreign film (ooooh, aren't we sophisticated and stuff?) Into Great Silence over the weekend. It's an almost 3 hour long documentary, for lack of a better term, inside a Carthusian monastery in France. Since the monks mostly keep a vow of silence, the movie is mostly silent. By that I mean, there are noises, footsteps, scissors, chopping, etc, but not much talking. It's not for people with ADD.

Now, I actually did fairly well, considering that sitting still for that long is difficult for me. But for me, the peace and joy of the monks really shone through, and so it was a very deep film.

It's hard to vocalize why I liked it. First, it was a beautiful film (well shot, and you have to be a bad photographer indeed to make the Alps look bad!) but it was more than that. It felt...transcendent. Oh, I sound incoherent. Ah well.

Here are a couple of links that you might be interested in reading, if you are thinking of going to see it.

http://www.decentfilms.com/sections/reviews/intogreatsilence.html
http://www.decentfilms.com/sections/articles/groning.html