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Silent Light (2007)

Director: Carlos Reygadas

Time Out rating

Average user rating

17 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

There are some directors whose films burn with a passion for composition and the precise movement of their camera. There are those, too, who reject speedy editing and a quick pace in favour of creating space for contemplation and examination. Carlos Reygadas is both of those directors, and while he may not have wholly succeeded with his debut, ‘Japón’, or its follow-up, ‘Battle in Heaven’, both of which were striking but overshadowed by distracting flights of provocation – old people having sex! Inter-generational blow-jobs! – he has now made a much more mature, coherent and serious work, and one which is certainly the best yet from this rising star of thoughtful, artful cinema.

It’s impossible to prise apart the real, the spiritual and the elemental in ‘Silent Light’, a tragic drama of love, routine, adultery and God’s will that plays out in a community of Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonites in rural Mexico and which owes a large debt to Antonioni and, more specifically, Dreyer. Paunchy, ruddy Johan (Cornelio Wall Fehr) and stick-thin, dowdy Esther (Miriam Toews) are arable farmers who live a life of routine with their three young kids in the presence of God. That same God leads Johan to Marianne (Maria Pankratz), his mistress, who his friend tells him is ‘the woman nature meant for you’. Their one, discreet sexual encounter is handled superbly by Reygadas who infuses this pivotal, ominous scene with a desperation, longing and spiritual gravity that echoes Marianne’s feeling that this is ‘the saddest time of my life – but also the best’.

Reygadas, again working with non-professionals, offers realism in front of the lens – the routines of eating, bathing and working are lent an extra fascination by the alien world of the Mennonites – and poetry within it. From the opening time-lapse sunrise, each sequence is carefully and pointedly constructed – and often with a breathtaking beauty, whether it’s the movement of a combine harvester through a field or a lingering shot of a flower after a lyrical, near-silent, beguiling sequence of kids taking a dip in a pond. Time and again, Reygadas’ fixed shots segue into dead-slow zooms, each of them suggestive of the import of the moment and the coming tragedy. When tragedy comes – Johan’s affair is not without repercussions of the most disastrous (or maybe even the most divinely willed) kind – it offers one of the most shocking, unexpected and daring finales in a long while.

Author: Dave Calhoun 2007-12-03 16:48:28

Time Out London Issue 1946: December 5-11 2007

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User reviews of this film

Spicer said...

Posted on Oct 09 2009 20:47 Ifeel like the child in the story The Emporers new clothes. Doesn't any one see that this is a terrible, boring, trite, movie??? Badly shot, badly acted, impossible to follow . And what is with the ending! Please someone else admit this was the worst movie ever!

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Paisye said...

Posted on Jul 26 2008 11:28 Amazing how you can squeeze 2 hours out of a single A4 sheet of dialogue. Why did it need need 10min beginning and end of sunrise/sunset? Wouldn't be a bad film if it wasn't so tedious and had been shot with more imagination than repetitive slow zooming

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D said...

Posted on Jun 19 2008 15:38 could someone explain the ending to me?

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Technoguy said...

Posted on May 13 2008 17:08 This film acts like a purgation of the junk-fest sensation and cliché language and plots
of our normal cinema.It takes us out of the real world and puts our senses through a sieve through a habit of perfection,distilling an uncreated light. There is a movement in world cinema to utilise non-professional actors and natural light together.The opening (and closing) shots open us up to a slow action shot almost in real time from
constellations in a black sky to dawn shots of the rising sun,with all the attendant sounds of crickets,cicadas and cattle lowing.This is a filtered and idealised human
nature set in a Mennonite community of Plautdiesh –speaking people who are attuned to the season’s cycles through cattle farming and crop harvesting.The film is composed of beautiful tableaus of widescreen natural vistas,earth and sky meeting on
wide horizons, well captured on the many driving sequences,backed up with a soundscape of waving grass and trees,crickets,birds and running water. Johan is sitting with his wife and six children giving silent grace with a ticking clock. Beneath the harmonious surface there is tension between the couple.His wife Esther takes the children out and he breaks down in tears when alone.He has been having a two year affair with Marianne,another Mennonite (single)female.The imagery in this film induces a kind of trance-like contemplation. His infatuated mood expresses itself through him driving round his friend Zackaria to some raunchy music.He goes on to meet Marianne in a long kissing scene which ends in them making love.He is well supported by his friend and father,who thinks it is fate or the devil’s work but does not condemn him.Johan thinks every man makes his own fate. We cut to a beautiful scene of the family bathing together.In such scenes the inner peace in the community is brought out.But his wife who he has told of his infidelity is close to tears as she loves him just as he does her,but he feels God intended Marianne for him.
We see the family at a cornharvest in some stunning scenes and the machine moving through the fields of corn.Johan,Esther and the kids say silent grace by their pick-up.
Johan feels torn and tells his wife he has to see Marianne,so she tells him to take the children to the dentists too.He engineers it so that a man looks after the kids in his camper van with it’s own TV set they can watch.He steals away and makes passionate love with Marianne for the last time.Marianne saying she is at her happiest and saddest since ‘Peace is stronger than love’ and expresses pity for Esther.
In a bleak driving scene in the pouring rain Esther asks to get out to vomit.She runs from the car to a tree and breaks down holding it.She has a sense of loss:she used to be a part of everything,fully alive next to Johan.Now heartbroken,she dies of heart attack.She is next laid up in a coffin after being washed by her mother while her family say their last good-byes.The community sing mournful hymns.He talks to Marianne saying he’d do anything to turn back time.Marianne asks to see Esther and
tears drop onto Esther’s cheek as Marianne kisses her.What follows is a kind of resurrection episode,but is probably metaphorical,a wish fulfilment happy ending.
You can either reject or accept this ending but remember this has a religious setting.For me it works.

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sylv said...

Posted on Mar 19 2008 14:32 some beautiful moments but s.......o slow. Even when something happens, it seems to float rather than occur. Don't see it if you have other options.

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Lawford said...

Posted on Jan 20 2008 14:05 I can see how some might feel this to be pretentious but it kept my interest throughout. Beautifuuly shot

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Roger McIntosh said...

Posted on Jan 18 2008 18:20 Pure cinema. A transcendentally beautiful & moving film. When you're sick of irony & smartarsed narratives, check this one out. Not to everyones taste, obviously, but since when did facetiousness pass for criticism. Here's a camera mate, you have a go!

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Miles said...

Posted on Dec 30 2007 19:35 There were times during this film when I wasn't sure whether I liked it or not. But it's a slow burner and one of those films where you have to relax and go with it. By the end I was transfixed and the first and last sunrise/sunset scenes will stay with me for a long time. Defininitely one to see alone and enjoy reflecting on afterwards.

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jack said...

Posted on Dec 28 2007 11:41 Laborious. Boring. Awful.

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Clare said...

Posted on Dec 19 2007 22:27 This film was very slow, had no emotional feeling, some of the acting was poor quality, mostly wooden and the film was too long. It could have been better in an hour and a half and with more passion and action.

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David said...

Posted on Dec 18 2007 21:55 Beautiful and deeply moving, this is one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time.

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liamo said...

Posted on Dec 13 2007 00:01 I wanted to like this but what I found was a pretentious, conceited, self-indulgent, laborious, humourless 136 minutes. A vanity project. But a memorable one in a strange way.
And had I joined the people who walked out of the cinema I would have missed something - that feeling of having been duped by the ending.

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Oli said...

Posted on Dec 11 2007 13:10 A beautiful, thoughtful and measured film, it gripped me from start to (wonderful) finish. Admittedly not everyone's cup of tea, but I loved it. Highly recommended.

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Phil Ince said...

Posted on Dec 10 2007 17:11 Near speechless; very long, static shots of ordinary faces neither acting nor reacting. On two occasions, the principle actors sob but without moving this viewer. To a latin, the sight of these mutes bearing their difficulties quietly may be an extraordinary revelation, but it's hard to imagine many saxons being impressed. However, some evidently are. The result is what might be produced by senior members of the Scout movement attempting to forge a Tarkovsky.

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leo said...

Posted on Dec 04 2007 16:30 I have seen it twice and i cant wait to see it again. I love each second of it

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