SILENT LIGHT
The film fest guide’s description gave warning enough. At the absolute basic core of this movie is a conventional well-worn plot about the moral complexities that come with an extramarital affair. I wouldn’t blame anyone for looking for another movie to see. But Silent Light was one of the few movies in the schedule that I had heard of… in the case of a review from The Onion’s A.V. Club, which gave it a very rare grade of ‘A’. Later on the Chicago Reader gave it an average rating, but the reviewers at that paper tend to be the ultimate film aficionados (snobs, being the word I use for myself, is too good for them). They criticize the cream of the crop of obscure indie movies, while putting old movies unavailable to home cinema viewers that maybe screened a single time in Chicago over the past 12 months on their top 10 of the year lists. I can’t rely on one critic to guide my film-watching, but The Onion has been fairly reliable (although giving an A- to Adventureland calls everything into question).
Anyway, the story of this amazing movie tells place on a Mexican Mennonite colony and the dialogue is in Plautdietsch. First of all, it was very intriguing that there were Mennonite communities in Mexico, and I had never heard of the Plautdietsch language, so the movie served as one of those cultural vignette films that plop me in a completely foreign situation that I have no context to understand.
Beautifully shots of this rural environment are patiently framed, and if there is one fault in this it is that it does allow you mind wander if you’re not prepared for how this movie will tell its story. After viewing Afterschool, however, I was in the zone that allowed me to appreciate visuals over substance. But while the dialogue in this movie is minimal relative to the way the director wants to focus on scenery, the universe Silent Light occupies is extremely compelling, with the slowly illuminating countryside being important to the overall environment these characters operate in.
The jealousy and bitterness that arise from this love triangle situation could cripple many families and relationships, but the spirituality of the landscape shape the moral compasses of these devout characters in unexpected ways. As the main character explains how he loves both his wife and lover, there was a little chuckle in the audience, but while we might have contempt for a typical male character talking in this way about his ‘burden’, in the context of this film you completely sympathize for him not because his betrayal his justifiable, but in every emotional line portrayed by the movie you understand that this culture seems to reflect on these moral weaknesses much more unique or deeply that you or I could imagine.
No film in recent memory has portrayed the countryside and nature as a calming influence so perfectly. The director’s sensitivity to this environment is incredible. Silent Light is meditative and magical, and the payoff for losing yourself in the mysticism of the movie comes in the amazing climax. The best part of my (abridged) film festival experience by far.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment