Silent Light (dir. Carlos Reygadas, 2007)

From time to time, I'm at a complete loss to understand a film's critical appeal. Silent Light, a 2007 film by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas recently released here in the US, dazzled the international film circuit, culminating with the Jury Prize at Cannes. Martin Scorsese exclaimed "I was amazed by Silent Light – the setting, the language, the delicacy of the interactions between the people on screen, the drama of redemption. And most of all by Carlos Reygadas’s extraordinarily rich sense of cinema, evident in every frame." NY Times film critic Manohla Dargis loved it so much that she saw it three times, and her colleague A.O. Scott listed it as his second favorite film of 2008. The accolades go on and on....

Silent Light examines the effects of an extra-marital affair on a secluded German Mennonite community in the heart of Mexico. Or at least it pretends to. Johan, a blond-haired, blue-eyed farmer, husband, and father of 5, falls in love with the young, spindly, Roman-nosed Marianne, who works as a waitress at a local diner. The mix of religious fundamentalism, sinful immorality, and cultural isolation spells the ingredients for a delicious existential epic, and in the hands of, say, Bergman, we might have feasted on just that. But Reygadas proves to be a less experienced chef, and instead of a meaty tome, we're left with a bland disaster - an immature exercise that places form over content, brushes its potential for spiritual crisis in only the most tangential ways, and ends with what I can only think of as an outright ripoff of Dreyer's Ordet masquerading as homage.

In the entire film, there were only two scenes that actually worked for me: the very first, and the very last. And neither of these scenes contain any human actors, or any narrative whatsoever. These scenes are beautiful, even haunting, time-lapse single-takes of sunrise and sunset, respectively. The slow pan and steady zoom, the enveloping sounds of night, the growing (or diminishing) photographic clarity - for all their transcendent glory, neither of these scenes actually add anything to the film's "story," such as it is. They might as well have been scenes from a high-def Nat Geo nature documentary.

Between these two scenes are two and half-hours of sheer torture. Somewhere along the way, Reygadas must have forgotten that a film like this needs a script, dialogue, tension. Without this, it's an empty exercise in form - and an immature one at that. We're bounced between various photographic techniques, which on their own might make for a short, interesting study in perspective, but which together simply deny a unifying aesthetic to what little story remains.

Perhaps I simply lack the appropriate film education to appreciate Silent Light, which in J. Hoberman's words, is "distinguished by its formal rigor." But then, isn't film (or art in general) supposed to transcend technique - isn't art a creative expression of the soul? Or is it simply a formal exercise?
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Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer)

#34 in the list of the 1000 greatest films of all time

Ordet (directed by Carl Theodore Dreyer) seems to pop up on a lot of people's "greatest films" lists. I'm not exactly sure where I'd first seen it promoted; it may have been Jonathan Rosenbaum's Top 100 or TSPDT's 1000 greatest films. By the time I saw it top Art and Faith's list of 100 most "spiritually significant" films (a list whose definition of "spirituality" is broad enough to encompass the works of David Lynch and Paul Thomas Anderson), my curiosity was piqued. I added it to my NYPL leopac queue a couple of days ago, picked it up from the 96th St. Branch this morning and watched it this afternoon.

The film is set in the religiously austere Danish countryside of the mid 1920's. The Borgen family farm has seen better days, and grandfather Borgen's three sons have each incurred his orthodox wrath. Johannes has lost his mind and believes himself to be Jesus Christ. His glazed look and ghost-like figure constantly haunts the film, tying scenes together with his eerily intoned blasphemies. Borgen's oldest son, Mikkel, has rejected faith altogether, while his youngest has set his sites on marrying Peter the tailor's daughter. Peter just happens to be Borgen's arch nemesis; both Borgen and Peter refuse to recognize each others religious sect. Even Mikkel's wife, Inger, has failed old Borgen, having born only daughters.

The film proceeds at a snail's pace; the dialogue, though at times intriguing, pales in comparison to the unflinching spiritual examinations of Dreyer's contemporary Ingmar Bergman. The camera work is slow and steady; there is only one principle closeup in the film, and it comes at the film's climax. The film, based on a play, also embraces the play's aesthetics; the Borgen home set has the three-wall feel of a stage, not unlike a modern-day sitcom. What distinguishes Ordet from filmed plays and sitcoms is the camera's incessant wandering, swiveling, and panning throughout the space. It all adds up to a slow, challenging experience, and it certainly sowed plenty of doubts in my mind that the payoff would be worth the wait. My wife couldn't take it, and left just minutes before the climax.

Spoiler alert: I'm about to discuss the ending. I realize I haven't given this film much of an enticing description so far, but nevertheless, I highly recommend you experience Ordet on your own before reading any further.

The entire film up to the climax is entirely devoid of the miraculous. Their world appears as our world appears: unrelentingly ordinary. Grandfather Borgen's existence is petty at best; his son Anders becomes little more than a pawn in his spiritual war against Peter the tailor. Mikkel and Inger's existence is simple, but happy, and Anders's and Anne's love, despite the Romeo and Juliet overtones, is actually entirely prosaic. Johannes's insanity is tragic, but explainable.

Inger goes into labor in the second half of the film, and for many reasons, we expect the worst. In the middle of it all, Johannes tells Inger's daughter that he will let her mother die so that he can bring her back to life. After Inger died, I kept thinking to myself, "How hokie would it be if Johannes actually raised her from the dead." I hoped that the film would continue its rejection of the miraculous and end on a brutally realistic note, or that any miracle would simply be the miracle of the ordinary.

And so I was surprised that when Inger rose from her open casket, hugged Mikkel, and wept, I wept too. I learned something about myself. It was exactly what I didn't want, and it was shattering! Even I, an unrepentant atheist, desperately crave a world where miracles are possible. Perhaps we all do. I guess that's what gives religion its seductive power.
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