I have wanted to watch this film since I first heard about
it a year or two ago. Recently I
bought the DVD and have awaited an appropriate time for its viewing. That time came when I was alone in the
house this morning, a time when the neighborhood is quiet.
Into Great Silence
is a film of the daily life of the Carthusian monks in the Grande Chartreuse monastery. The filmmaker, Philip Gröning of
Zeitgeist Films, requested permission to do the filming and was told to wait;
fifteen years later they contacted him to tell him now was the time. Their conditions were ones he had
already laid on himself: only he
would do the filming, there would be no extra lighting, the rules and routine
would continue uninterrupted. He
lived in the monastery for six months, and the result is 162 minutes of some of
the most powerful film I’ve ever seen.
Warnings: You
cannot watch this film in bits and pieces if you wish to understand and benefit
from it. You cannot watch it while
conversing with a companion or surfing the web or reading or chatting on Google
or talking/texting on the phone.
It’s not a popcorn-and-coke sort of film. You should not watch it if you are inclined to be cynical
and judgmental about others’ chosen ways of life, or if you are inclined to
mock austerity and ritual. (It
would help, if you are unaware, to learn a little about the purposes of
monastic life before watching it.)
And if you cannot bear silence – it might behoove you to try, and to
work up to watching it in its entirety, so that you can come to understand the
beauty and the value of silence and contemplation.
The Grande Chartreuse is considered the most austere of all
monasteries today. The monks live
by a rule of silence, broken only by prayers, chants, bells, readings at meals,
certain rituals such as the welcoming of novices to the order, and on their
weekly day for walking outdoors in informal companionship, where they talk
however they wish with one another.
The days are strictly regimented, following the traditional hours of
worship, with work and study delineated between the times of private and public
prayer. When two or more are
together during the day, fixing a meal or giving and receiving haircuts or
chopping wood, they do not speak, but give and accept service with a silent and
companionable grace.
I was afraid that even I, who desire and value silence,
solitude, and contemplation, would not be able to watch it through quietly –
but before the end of the first half-hour my mind had come almost to complete
rest within the beauty before me.
The smallest sounds became a symphony of life – chopping celery, a spoon
lifting soup from a bowl, rain dropping into a pool, footsteps echoing in a
cloistered walk, a chair scraping across the floor, a page turning, a pen
scratching across paper. Important
sounds, the sounds of life being lived, sounds we never hear for our incessant
music and television and talk, talk, talk. And when they do converse freely, as on their weekly walks,
the conversation is seasoned with salt – serious doctrinal debates salted with
grace and jokes and enjoyment of fellowship, a sledding competition which leads
to admiration of skill and fun-filled laughter for its lack – and surely all of
it all the more a joy because not constantly indulged, and all the more
gracious because who wants to waste precious limited time together on foolish
talk or unworthy conflict.
And time and space to see, as well. Instead of barely noticing our
environment, silence opens us to the time and inclination to see the shape of a
leaf, a drop of water falling from an icicle, the pattern of sun on wood
flooring, the peace in a brother’s eyes.
Inscape, Hopkins would tell us, Christ poured out into His creation and
especially “lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not His / To the Father through
the features of men’s faces.”
Just the faces of the monks moved me to tears more than
once. Gröning occasionally focuses
on just one face for an intense few seconds; peace is what we see in each one,
and while most are solemn at this scrutiny, most also begin to offer a hint of
a smile that suggests a great joy sparkling beneath the quiet exterior. The elderly blind brother who gave the
only interview recorded in the film spoke with such deep love of the Savior,
such trust and confidence, such acceptance of all that comes as intended to
bless our lives; what joy silence and contemplation and thoughtful relationship
with God and others has brought to him.
On the case for the DVD is written “This transcendent,
closely observed film seeks to embody a monastery, rather than simply depict
one – it has no score, no voiceover [. . .]. What remains is stunningly elemental: time, space and light. [. . .] More meditation than documentary, it’s
a rare, transformative experience [. . .].” I can only say “amen,” with the hope and prayer that some of
that experience will stay with me as I keep trying to learn how to love my Lord
more truly.
