Into Great Silence

I saw Into Great Silence a couple of nights ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. What a tremendous film: a documentary about the lives of Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartreuse, remotely located in the French Alps. The Carthusian is considered the most stringent of the monastic orders in the Roman Catholic church: severe vows of silence, solitude, and poverty. The film is long (160 min.) and very quiet. Also very beautiful. The photography is exquisite: the camera watches the monks as they work, worship, and pray and there are sublime moments in the images of drying dishes, falling snow, ringing bells. The sounds are minimal and therefore all the more significant: dripping water, creaking wood, shuffling feet. For a Western film, it all feels very Zen! As the viewer is taken through the season at the monastery, the faces of these men become familiar and one leaves feeling a sense of respect for these individuals who (even as I write!) are participating in a rigorous attempt to become closer to their God.

Or not. Part of me thinks it’s craziness! If I try to think of such a lifestyle myself, I don’t think I could last a day, let alone a lifetime. And yet the audio/visual resources of which I avail myself ceaselessly (computer, newspaper, television, radio, etc.) can sometimes leave me feeling almost nauseous. Maybe there’s a paradoxical kind of freedom to be found in such penitential restraint?