Silent Light

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.

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.

There are two ways of making a movie genius. One way is you make it an exciting storytelling, with lots of twists, surprises and well placed moments of tension turned to gold by great acting and tasteful camera angles and lighting.

The other way is this.

People will say this movie is boring. It is. They will say it drags itself. It does.

But while it does, it becomes painstakingly realistic. An average Joe doesn't spend his life fighting terrorists and being tossed around by the explosions he can't avoid, and while an average Joe can have a war land on his head or a ship sink under his feet, the really unlucky Joe will spend his life trying to make a living with no real chances of a worldwide tragedy turning him into a martyr or a hero.

"Stellet Licht" doesn't feed you the story. The key to deciphering this movie is that you must notice most shots are in a sort of "point of view" mode that keeps telling you "this could be you. What would you think right now? What would you do?".

And while it doesn't feed you everything, actions and dialogues, no matter how simple they sound at first are deeply meaningful and provide amazing food for thought. Marshall MacLuhan once described movies as "hot" media, demanding attention to find the meaning while leaving little space for your own participation as most is fed to you. A movie like "The Preadator" is hot; it doesn't immerse you as much as it attacks your senses of hearing and seeing.

In "Stellet Licht" while visuals and sound are of crucial importance in the beauty of the shots, the movie keeps a constant dialogue with the viewer and it's this viewer who ends up making a great part of the movie. This would be the definition of a "cool" media. In the end, everybody will have seen this movie differently and it will be a very intimate experience if only you lay the popcorn's aside and think about what is being shown to you.

Watch it with your significant other and you will realize there is so much to talk about, unlike with many other movies that leave you with trivialities and little more. So "Stellet Licht" is more than amazing story telling, it's what a dear friend of mine calls art: something that intertwines and confuses itself with real life.

If not for everybody, certainly not for those who expect a movie to spoon feed them and are not willing to incorporate and reinterpret the experience, but for those who are willing to think and discuss some of the strong subjects of this movie, "Stellet Licht" is a not just a movie, but an enlightening experience.

As a Mexican, I forget that this country is formed not only by cities'and country inhabitants. There is an almost infinite number of variables between those to macro worlds. A movie like this helps you remember how diverse and rich human race is, and that you are surrounded by so many different types of individuals, but it's just that you don't want to look carefully. This movie is really art cinema, and it was great for me watching this kind of production in a commercial location. From the moment of the initial sequence -that resembles the long scenes in Russian movies and theater- I knew that what I was about to witness was a display of delightful movie making. This one is definitely not for the average movie goer that wants to see explosions all over the place and easy to understand plots. No, definitely not. But If you are one of those, I strongly encourage you to see it, but do that with an open mind, knowing that it will be an extremely hard to digest film. And sometimes, you need to sacrifice something in order to enjoy the worthy things in life. And with the closing sequence, parallel to the opening one, I felt I paid to watch a real movie, and believe me, that does not happen often to me.

The six-minute opening shot of Silent Light depicts the starry night sky giving way, slowly but relentlessly, to the nascent light of the early morning sun. This shot could in itself serve as a captivating short film but in its particular context it serves most obviously to set the overall pace for this film by the Mexican director Carlos Reygadas: slow.

The cast of Silent Light consists primarily of non-actors drawn from the Menonite religious community in which the film is set. Their fine performances create a believable and frequently captivating world for the viewer. We are given insights into the day-to-day lives of the family as the story slowly develops in stages, grimly charting the inexorable demise of the relationship between husband Johan and wife Esther.

Around the stark central narrative there are some charming scenes and some superb camera work. Even the scenes where the children playing in the pond are all-too-aware of the presence of the camera carry a certain fascination. Having said that there are too many shots where the camera lingers to seemingly little effect, except to make the viewer feel distinctly uncomfortable (as one other reviewer has pointed out, there is something rather unnerving about the kissing scene involving Johan and Marianne).

I also feel compelled to add that there is a rather bizarre twist at the end of what would otherwise be a straightforward and powerful story. For me this threw into some confusion the preceding two hours of film and left the story hanging on an oddly unsatisfactory note. Despite the slow pacing and somewhat bewildering ending this is a strong, distinctive piece of film-making and I would recommend that it be viewed in a cinema rather than on the small screen so as to get the best of some superb camera-work.