silent light s s s Directed by carlos reygadas
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In fact Silent Light’s technique is so breathtaking that I could get through a whole review without touching on the story, and that would be fine with director Carlos Reygadas. “I hate the idea that film is actually telling a story!” he remarked to Bright Lights, and a few years earlier, interviewed by the online journal Close-up Film, he explained, “Narrative for me is just a vehicle that is probably an evil but a necessary evil. You do need a story but I don’t care about story because I know that the same story told in a mediocre way is mediocre and the same story told properly is a great story. So I really feel much closer to painting or music where narrative is not important.” Of course, narrative is the great fault line of cinema, a medium that combined theater and photography; some people go to movies hoping to get involved in a story, while others are satisfied with pure visual information, whether their particular taste runs to CGI spaceships or five-minute shots of the sun rising.
As a result, every scene tends to create its own powerful reality. Immediately following the dramatic sunrise, Reygadas spends nearly three minutes examining a middle-aged farmer, Johan (Cornelio Wall), his obedient wife, Esther (Miriam Toews), and their six children as they sit around the kitchen table, praying silently, the clock tick-tocking on the wall and the animals still caterwauling outside, before Johan ends the grace with a decisive “Amen.” Later that day, when Johan goes to pick up a crankshaft for his tractor, Reygadas zooms hypnotically into the darkness of the open garage—the first of many gravelike images—as, inside, men shout at one another, the radio blasts, and a grinding power tool nearly drowns them out. In keeping with the Mennonites’ straight-ahead morality, Reygadas favors four-square angles and symmetrical compositions, though whenever he escapes the man-made environments, his wide-screen landscapes are wildly beautiful.
Care to comment? See this review at chicagoreader.com. And for more on movies, see our On Film blog.
