Movie Review: Into Great Silence

But--if you cannot give us ease--

Last of the race of them who grieve

Here leave us to die out with these

Last of the people who believe!

Silent, while the years engrave the brow;

Silent--the best are silent now.

-Matthew Arnold, "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse"

Into Great Silence is an experience of monkish life at the Grande Chartreuse monastery high in the French Alps. This is not an easy film for contemporary people to watch because, true to its name, it is mostly a silent film. There is little to no dialogue and what plot there is must be supplied by the viewer. Indeed, the filmmaker added no music and used no artificial light in the film. What you see is what you get, in a sparse and importantly rhetorical way. The film is as stripped down as the lives of the monks, but it manages to capture the appeal of leaving behind what is no longer needed and embracing the grace and beauty that already surrounds you. For more on the filmmaker, Philip Gröning, see this excellent review.

Indeed, the opening sequences are so full of silence and stillness that it was almost painful. Although Kathy and I both sat down to watch it, only I was able to finish it, and that at some considerable exertion of will power. Of course, that may not sound like a recommendation, but I'm really glad I watched this film. It is both contemplative and sobering, still and silent in some deep way that most of contemporary life is no longer capable of recreating. In fact, I was struck by the depth of the religious commitment possessed by these men and I realized how little faith I have and how little discipline and how little consciousness of beauty.

Most of the time the monks are filmed in their rooms, reading, studying, praying. One gathers from the film that their whole life passes between reading, eating, studying, praying, and working. This doesn't sound so bad, when you put it like that. Interspersed toward the end of the film are shots of the monks standing quietly in front of the camera. What is striking is how young their eyes look in these shots - much younger than most of the eyes encountered these days in contemporary settings.

The best scene of the film is a few minutes of the monks sledding down a freshly snow-covered mountain. The effect of the silence of the monks' lives is reinforced by the fact that all of the sounds experienced there are strikingly natural. It is a world where tools make noise, but not machines. Rain dropping on the roof. Wind blowing. The stream rolling down the mountain. A monk chopping wood. A monk gardening. And so on. The only artificial sound in the whole film, really, is the ringing of a church bell, but somehow it feels like such a natural and fitting sound for the landscape and the architecture. The sounds fit the place and they seem to break up the silence just perfectly.

The simplicity of their lives is astounding and the depth of their spiritual life in solitude and contemplation is inspiring. It really makes you wonder how little you could get by on. Maybe a wood burning stove, a couple of books, a chair, a table, and a bed. And work. Of course, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of family life and women are completely absent in the film, which for me, ultimately means I could never choose this monkish existence. However, it led me to question Hume's assertion that the monkish virtues are more vice than virtue. His claim is that the active life is better than the life of contemplation and solitude. Of course, contemplation and solitude is what we have too little of in this world of ours, and this film reminds the viewer that choosing to live without these virtues is at best to lose something essential in the human experience.

The final scenes of the film are an interview of sorts with a blind monk who talks about the emptiness of modern life and reinforces the grace and gratitude that should prevail in the human experience, gratitude to God for the beauty of the earth and the simple life. One of the best moments in the film comes earlier. The image on the screen is that of an old cloister hallway with sunlight streaming in. One of the monks is speaking to their weekly sabbath gathering:

Consider the analogy of the sunbeam:

Whoever feels its kindly light rejoices

as if the sun existed for him alone,

yet it illuminates land and sea

and is master of the atmosphere.

In the same way,

the spirit is given to each one

who receives him

as if he were the possession

of that person alone.