Lumière silencieuse

I urge readers to watch this.

The story is touching and human. A family man who is seized by a new inexplicable love that tells him the old love, what he used to think as love, was merely peace and habit, and yet he can't be sure. Is the new one merely passion? Does he have a right to betray the trust? Deny himself happiness? It is the most profoundly troubling question that I imagine can arise in a lifetime.

The film is merely one possible outcome, how making a choice can upset the whole universe, the question itself is much more difficult and deep. If you're 18 the gravity of it might not register, you still have second and third chances ahead of you. But after a certain age, I imagine it becomes entirely cosmic, entirely about choosing the last person you're going to know and love.

My only quibble about this is the stifled Germanic presence all through the film. I'm talking about the deliberately inexpressive faces, pauses and careful poses, people arranged in symmetries around objects, none of which is artful in my world. Well art can be anything so it is not that so much as choosing the world you're going to live in and I'll have none of that stylized pouting in my home, suffering can never be an aesthetic.

Yet in this hard shell there is a softly pounding heart of beauty.

One is how this harsh German presence is softened by the afterglow of a sweeter sun and rolling Mexican landscape, which is where the film takes place. Mellowed in this way it brings to the fore a quality I admire in Protestants: simple lives, joy in austerity and nonattachment. Though it came from historical necessity, it's still the closest thing to Zen we've known in Europe.

The other thing is even simpler yet that much more beautiful. The film is shot in long quiet sweeps of ordinary nothing, those who keep in touch know I am frequently vexed by this technique because it so often becomes merely about style instead of sculpted insight, a garment worn a certain way.

Transcendent vision in film, which is at its most powerful, is about unconcealing a fuller sense of world, broader horizons. It cannot be a proclamation of love but a gesture that embodies what it means to; words are just too easy and cheap, whereas the visible action is itself the commitment.

Here we have something that is elegant and simple in just the right measure.

In the story we have new love that extends from the old, a new feeling, new beginnings one after the other, not always the one desired or anticipated.

All through the film we have a dozen or so subtle metaphors about just this feeling of unconcealing a new world, of reaching an end which is only the start of the next landscape.

My favorite are the following two. A combine threshes a wheatfield, a violent, clustered image of uprooting, only to arrive at the end of the field at an open horizon of fields. And even greater, during the river scene, the man and soon-to-be betrayed wife embrace as their children wash below, still close, their bodies leave the frame and we're left for several lingering moments in the hazy unfocused space of their absence, only for the camera to slowly find and focus on a blossoming flower.

Breathtaking!

So when she departs in the end and miraculously comes to again, it the same inner blossom from nothing, call it a sense of the mother still being in the world. The world does not end so long as we keep this anticipation of presence, fields to see after this one, new people to love, never bogged down by loss. The hazy landscape of seeming nothingness already contains the flower, in that scene it is neither there as we don't see it nor not there as it is there to be found, and this all has its meditative sense.

I'm glad for this film. From now on, whenever it happens that I have to try and illustrate the Buddhist notion of emptiness, or shunyata, I will reach for this one scene.

Something to meditate upon.

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.

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.

It is a very good film. This is contemplation cinema, with beautiful landscapes and really touching scenes. Although the argument isn't an innovative one, the context and the way the director captures its work empowers the story and succeeds in maintaining viewers attention despite the long shots that often makes the spectator to run out of patience, to get distracted or bored. Innovative context. The first movie about Mexican mennonites (40 000)in their own language (plautietsch)played by real mennonites that aren't real actors. It shows in an honest way their life style in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, how they live almost without interacting with Spanish speaking mexicans. Up to now, definitely Carlos Reygadas best film. I'm not saying that everybody would enjoy this film, but to me it is an excellent movie and I broadly recommend it. Its awards are richly deserved. "Stellet Licht" is a work of art.

This is certainly not a film for everybody and I will be careful in who I recommend this movie to. It is challenging because it is very unsatisfying to the 5 senses we are used to (over)feed. This movie is like meditating, you need to surrender to it, ignore what your mind is telling you about what a movie should be, surrender to the slowness first and then to the lack of almost everything we are normally used to in a movie. There is so little you can chew on, no acting, inhibited emotions, no laughter, even the acclaimed picture is unsatisfying (don't see this movie for that reason). Everything is internal, barely reaching the surface. If you can tune in though, like in a meditation, you will become ultra sensitive, sense the subtle and begin to enjoy. Some scenes may even totally fill your spirit. One word of caution though, if you intend to see this movie in a theatre: it is very likely that some people will become uncomfortable and leave, keep talking, protest etc... which makes it even more difficult to watch it with serenity so renting it as a DVD may be a more suitable option. If you are the kind of person enjoying a walk in the countryside contemplating nature without talking you'll probably enjoy this movie. If you prefer talking or being entertained then chances are that you will not.