Into Great Silence Download
Sam Eich
Read Matthew Arnold's Stanzas from the Grande ChartreuseI have been reading about the German film Die grosse Stille since its release in 2005, mostly because it has won all sorts of European film festival awards. In 1984, director Philip Groening made an official request to the Carthusian monks of the legendary monastery of La Grande Chartreuse, to film a documentary about monastic life there. Since the pace of modern life does not mean much within a cloister, the monks considered the request and ultimately gave their approval -- 16 years later. My friends who live near Grenoble took me to visit La Grande Chartreuse, but you are allowed to visit only the museum, housed in the old monastic buildings, where you can learn about the process of making the Chartreuse liqueur but not actually enter the cloister.
As someone with great admiration for the monastic life (I count myself very lucky to teach music and art history in a school run by a Benedictine abbey), I have been longing to see the movie ever since. It opened on Friday for a brief run at the E Street Cinema, and my favorite Washington Post film reviewer, Desson Thomson, published a lengthy article about it (The Silent Treatment, March 30) in Friday's paper. I have been reading Desson Thomson's reviews since very shortly after I moved to Washington, and I can think of very few movies of which he approved that I have not subsequently liked. Even so, a movie about monastic life, I feared, may not appeal to just anyone. I should never have worried, because Thomson's review expressed perfectly what this movie will likely mean to me:At first, the silence feels imposing -- practically deafening -- as we watch the documentary "Into Great Silence" and the monks of the Grand Chartreuse monastery praying, reading the Bible or simply sitting in quiet contemplation. But as we become acclimated to this muted atmosphere (we have plenty of time, as the film is nearly three hours long), something extraordinary happens: Our senses sharpen. The whispering of snow outside, the occasional clearing of a throat and -- sweet mercy! -- the clanging of a bell that summons these befrocked Carthusians to prayer reach our ears with a resounding purity. We may not experience their inner glories, but when we hear the monks' Gregorian chants, it's as though we have slipped from our seats into the back pews of Chartreuse.
All movies are about transformation, in a sense, as we focus -- almost reverently -- on the glowing screen before us. But we are accustomed to our emotions being marshaled along with music, snappy editing, special effects. "Into Great Silence" subjects us, instead, to a sort of sensory deprivation -- echoing the ascetic lifestyle of these monks, who are bound to a life of near-silent contemplation aside from weekly conversational breaks. [...] By luring us into their hushed world, filmmaker Philip Groening -- who produced, directed, shot and edited the movie -- subtly provokes us into an active state of observation. We experience the rituals of these men's lives, our heads craned forward and our breath held so we don't disturb their devotions. And as we vicariously participate in their daily rituals, we find ourselves, quite literally, at the ground level of spiritual worship. It's hard to recall a similar documentary that brings viewers so palpably close to that sacred experience. Even such religiously themed commercial successes as "The Passion of the Christ" and "The Chronicles of Narnia," which moved their audiences with special-effects technology and star power, seem brassy and superfluous by comparison.The entire review merits your attention. My own review will follow shortly, as soon as I have found the opportunity to see the movie for myself.
Welcome to an extraordinary film about the Carthusian monks of Grand Chartreuse in the mountains near Grenoble, France. This order was founded by Saint Bruno of Cologne (1030 - 1181) in 1084 and is considered to be the Catholic Church's most ascetic order. The monastery itself was built in 1688 and the monks who reside there have dedicated their lives to God, to silence, and to solitude. Visitors are not allowed. But thanks to the patience, creativity, and diligence of Philip Groning, we now have access to what goes on in this holy place where prayers, study, and physical work form the repetitive foundations of daily life.
Monasticism has existed for centuries, yet it is only recently that many people around the world have visited these places for personal retreats. Groning first approached the monks about making a film inside the Grand Chartreuse in 1984 but had to wait 16 years until permission was given to do so. He lived in the monastery for six months, sleeping in a small cell and doing certain chores in addition to shooting the film, which he did without the assistance of a crew or any artificial light. Goring has subtitled this journey into one spiritual realm a meditation on life, a contemplation of time, silence, repetition, and rhythm.
The rule of silence is that one should speak as little as possible. One must never speak in the chapel, the anteroom or the hallways. But there are prescribed times when communication with others is permitted, including the four-hour Sunday walks. One of the most surprising touches is a scene where the monks gather on a snow-capped mountain and take turns sliding down the hill on their boots; a few lose their balance, fall over, and roll down the snowy slope laughing.
This extraordinary film ends with a spiritual quotation that conveys the heart of the monastic life and the bounties of silence: "I am the ONE who is." This film, which both depicts and creates a contemplative experience, is bound to become a classic among spiritual people of every religion and seekers of all stripes. Make every effort to see it in a theater.
Two hours and 45 minutes of almost total silence. I think in total there was about 5 minutes of speech and probably 10 to 20 minutes of chanting. The only other human created sounds were doors opening and closing, footsteps, a spoon scraping a bowl, etc. There were environmental sounds like rain, wind, and birds.
I suppose this is why I wanted to see Into Great Silence so badly. For a few hours, time just stood still. This sensation (and I can only describe it as a sensation) was most prominent during certain scenes of the film. In particular, scenes of the monks in solitary silent prayer and scenes where the director simply filmed the monks looking into the camera invoked this sensation.
Those scenes became the most calming of all. Each one (we would see them in groups of three, interspersed throughout the film) would simply stand there and gaze at the camera. Some would have a Mona Lisa like smile. Some would look directly, unblinking, into the camera. Some seemed to simply see the camera as one more thing in their field of vision - neither interesting nor uninteresting. Watching these short clips seemed like we were staring 'at each other' forever when I'm sure it was just a few seconds. I wonder how most of us would respond to the direction - "Just look into the camera."
Nearly 20 years after his initial request, filmmaker Philip Gröning was granted permission by the General Prior of the Grande Chartreuse monastery, located high in the French Alps, to document the day-to-day routines of the reclusive Carthusian Order of Monks, a centuries-old Roman Catholic brotherhood of whom next to no aural or visual documentation exists. Gröning was required to live and work among the monks, filming by himself on hi-definition video and Super 8 for only a few hours a day, using only available light and sound. The resulting work, Into Great Silence, is a masterful object of contemplation, a 162-minute journey into a cloistered world of ritualistic repetition, always with the promise of revelation and transcendence.
There is a film that was made a few years back by Phillip Groning called Into Great Silence. It is a documentary that was filmed over a year at the Grand Chartreuse Monastery in an awe-inspiring setting in the French Alps, home to the Carthusian Order which dates back to the year 1084 and remains fairly unchanged from that time to the present. It is an order that maintains silence at all times in the monastery.
Since the beginning of Christendom, silence has been a part of the great spiritual tradition of the Church. Today, the world sees this pretty much only in the example of the contemplative religious who spend their days in some great big monastery in the middle of nowhere. Really, though, the practice of observing silence is still alive and well in the Church. Of course, not everyone is called to live their lives in total seclusion like a contemplative religious brother or sister, but certainly most priests and seminarians spend a lot of time in silence, both in their own daily prayer and meditation but also on more rigorously structured retreats. Many of my friends in the internet world often seem confused when I talk about going on a silent retreat, so I thought share some information here.
"The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I would reply: Create silence! The Word of God cannot be heard in the noisy world of today. And even if it were blazoned forth with all the panoply of noise so that it could be heard in the midst of all the other noise, then it would no longer be the Word of God. Therefore create Silence."
--that's a little unfair, as this is a documentary, not a dramatic film, but it's still an experience. On one hand, it's genuinely mesmerizing, on the other, depending on one's preferences, it's easy to imagine it being unbearable (I cheated this time and broke my own viewing into three really laid-back sequences)
We learn in An Infinity of Little Hours that each cell at Parkminster has a Scriptural text on the door, which the monks see each time they enter. Perhaps evoking these reminders, the film is punctuated with occasional verses from Scripture, particularly this verse from Jeremiah: You have seduced me, O Lord; and I let myself be seduced (Jer 20:7). What do you think seduced these young men to try the life? What would seduce you into that life? What quote would you wish to have over your cell door?
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