Into Great Silence- A+
Welcome to Splicing Tapes! Our goal here is to provide yet another invaluable tool to help you slog through the ever-expanding mess of media suddenly available to the masses via Netflix, AppleTV, and the vast series of tubes known as the Internet. We hope to stay current, stay relevant, and though we were both film majors at a large state university, bull-shit free.
Every week you can check for reviews and opinions on whatever gets caught in our pop culture nets. We cast them wide and we cast them deep, and every now and then we catch something worth holding onto.
I know it’s my first post and you’re probably thinking ‘they’re already starting with an A+ review? I didn’t even know they rated films that way!” Well, we do now. And likely will later. The specifics might change (letters, thumbs, bowling balls) but the idea is the same, and we trust that you, dear readers, are such an enterprising bunch that you’ll make perfect sense of it. You found your way here, didn’t you? Enough said.
Onto the film.
Into Great Silence is a documentary by Philip Groning. It was released in 2005 and made quite the stir at Sundance 2006, which is how it wound up in my Netflix queue. From Wikipedia:
“Into Great Silence (Die Große Stille) is a documentary film directed by Philip Gröning [1] that was first released in 2005. It is an intimate portrayal of the everyday lives ofCarthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse, high in a remote corner of the French Alps (Chartreuse Mountains). The film was made 16 years after the director first requested permission to make it. Then he lived at the monastery for six months, and filmed all alone, behind the walls no ‘outsider’ had ever been allowed to enter before.”
That would sum it up EXCEPT they fail to mention that, aside from some chanting and 3-4 minutes of dialogue, the entire film is silent. No sound. Audibly absent. siiiiiiiileeeeeeeeennnttttttt.
And therein lies the A+ rating. If documentaries are both intended and most effective when they portray the experience of another and make you question how you’d react in the same situation, this is the best documentary I’ve seen. If you make the effort to stay awake during the 2 hours and forty five minutes (I know, I know, but these guys do it their whole lives!) it rewards you in ways that are entirely unexpected. I went through phases: boredom, interest, sleepiness, fascination, back to sleepiness, and finally a stillness that must be the films whole reason for being (I assume). Those phases are what make it so wonderful. It has a specific intention and simultaneously prompts mental tangents you follow long after the film is over. It’s also gorgeously shot. If you’re looking for a quiet and exciting new viewing experience you can’t get a much better film than this.
I hope you enjoy the reviews. If you don’t, let us know. If you do, let us know. If you have a film or an opinion, let us know.
Here’s to film-
Leave a Reply