PLOT: Camera records the daily lives of a reclusive order of monks as they silently and slowly go about their daily activities.
It may sound absurd to say that three hours of watching monks silently, and slowly, going about their daily lives without commentary does not go by as slowly as you'd think.
It would also be a bit of a fib, since the average stressed city-dweller (like me) may have some difficulties gearing down enough to properly appreciate German director Philip Groening's realized obsession.
Groening spent years trying to nail down permission from the Carthusian Order of Monks to film the silence of daily life in the Chartreuse Monastery in the French Alps (despite the name, these apparently aren't liqueur makers).
The result, sans commentary save the odd onscreen biblical passage, is more of a sensory deprivation session than a movie -- with similarly surprising moments of stimulation.
Having spent so many years on this project, we wouldn't expect Groening to limit himself to, say, a half-hour short. But why three hours? Why not six? Maybe that will wait for the DVD.
A kind of a walking painting, the events such as they are include the initiation of a novice (an early moment when words are actually spoken), the making of vestments, the cooking of food, and of course prayer.
A few other spoken moments include those of the Abbot holding forth in French for the camera on the nature of the Holy Spirit --a complicated bit of Catholic theology that makes a lot more sense when you've been primed with a few hours of silence. (Breaks in the silence seem to be okay when the monks leave the monastery grounds -- they become virtual chatterboxes on one, brief mountain hike).
What seems to happen when you watch a movie in near total silence is that you become almost sensory-starved -- a meditative state by definition, I suppose.
Garment sheers become tremendously loud. The seasons themselves seem to make noise as they unfold in time-lapse. And you look for the slightest hint of a smile on the faces of the many monks on whom the camera rests in almost facial-pore close-up for 10-or-more seconds at a time. (I'm convinced the hunched-over old tailor is a real character away from monastic life, but I might have been reading to much into the occasional facial tic).
After all that, Into Great Silence's one actually antic moment -- a winter scene of monks on a hike, playfully sliding down a slope on their butts (and in the case of a well-balanced few, their feet) almost seems like a scene from Animal House.
Interestingly, after two-plus hours of intimate stoicism, the monks' single most human moment is shot from a distance.
BOTTOM LINE: Three hours of monks' silent and slow lives is more of a sensory deprivation session than a movie. An interesting and even revelatory experience, if you've got nowhere else to be and your mind's unencumbered by, say, the rest of your life.
(This film is rated G)
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