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64
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63
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63
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60
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58
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58
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58
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57
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57
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55
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54
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54
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53
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53
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52
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51
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49
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47
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47
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46
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45
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43
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43
Meet Dave
43
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41
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39
Nights in Rodanthe
37
Miracle at St. Anna
36
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36
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36
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35
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35
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35
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34
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26
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24
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|
Into Great Silence
Zeitgeist Films
MPAA RATING: Not Rated
This documentary about an ascetic monastery is one of the most mesmerizing and poetic chronicles of spirituality ever created. More meditation than documentary, it's a rare, transformative theatrical experience for all. (Zeitgeist Films)
| GENRE(S): |
Documentary
|
Foreign
|
| WRITTEN BY: |
Philip Gröning
|
| DIRECTED BY: |
Philip Gröning
|
| RELEASE DATE: |
Theatrical: February 28, 2007
|
| RUNNING TIME: |
169 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
France / Switzerland / Germany |
| LANGUAGE(S): |
French / Latin (with English subtitles) |
Original title "Die Große Stille"; Special Jury Prize (World Cinema - Documentary), 2006 Sundance Film Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
100
Boston Globe
Ty Burr
One of the transporting film experiences of this or any other year.

100
San Francisco Chronicle
Walter Addiego
The silence captured in this documentary -- a meditative look at life in the Carthusian monastery of the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps -- may be the most eloquent you'll ever hear.

91
Portland Oregonian
Marc Mohan
You might not be able to picture yourself in such a life, but you'll be glad that it persists.

90
The New York Times
A.O. Scott
I hesitate, given the early date and the project's modesty, to call Into Great Silence one of the best films of the year. I prefer to think of it as the antidote to all of the others.

88
TV Guide
Ken Fox
Groning's approach gives the viewer a rare chance to really listen to what water sounds like when it drips from a tin bowl, or the watch what patterns raindrops make when they fall on a shallow puddle -- purely sensual, cinematic experiences. In such moments we sense the point of view of a patient, sensitive filmmaker.

88
Philadelphia Inquirer
Steven Rea
This beautiful, unfolding film is an antidote to the high-velocity, maximum-volume world most of us find ourselves immersed in, offering a glimpse into a rigorously spiritual alternative. Its calmness, its reflection, is full of allure.

88
Chicago Tribune
Michael Wilmington
A film of great spiritual intensity and haunting minimalism that enlarges your concepts of movies and of life. Like the monks of the Carthusian order, it distills something intoxicating through a style that's pure and rigorous.

88
Miami Herald
Marta Barber
Groening doesn't judge the monks' actions, nor does he tell us much about their reasons for choosing such a life. Yet the film brings us into their lives not as an observer but almost as a fellow hermit, making you realize how hard -- or easy -- it would be to commit yourself to such a life.

80
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
As we vicariously participate in their daily rituals, we find ourselves 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.

80
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
This 2005 feature is demanding to say the least, but its pulse-slowing rhythms leave a real sense of peace.

80
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
This is a remarkable work of pure documentary cinema, and a mystical accomplishment on the order of Wagner's "Parsifal" or Tarkovsky's "The Sacrifice." That's hardly anybody's thing these days -- it's not often mine. But the effort, in this case, is worth it.

80
Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
A transcendent, transporting experience, a trance movie that casts a major league spell by going deeply into a monastic world that lives largely without words.

75
New York Post
V.A. Musetto
The overwhelming silence is broken mainly by chanting and the ringing of the monastery bells. Call it life in the slow, slow, slow lane.

75
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Noel Murray
As a place to enter and meditate, Into Great Silence is imminently worthy, but as a documentary, it doesn't do enough to probe the meaning of the quotation Gröning returns to repeatedly: "Oh Lord, you have seduced me, and I was seduced."

70
LA Weekly
Ella Taylor
Gröning makes us fully feel the rhythms of their lives, but for the same reasons that most of us couldn't or wouldn't last in such a stripped-down environment, the movie, at just shy of three hours, starts to feel oppressive after two.

70
Variety
Jay Weissberg
With a painterly eye and a deep appreciation for the hermetic world set apart from, rather than at odds with, modern life, helmer Philip Groening takes the viewer into their cloistered world.

70
Village Voice
Michelle Orange
Natural light is used to euphoric effect, inevitably summoning the old masters, and Gröning's frames are balanced and symmetrical, in Renaissance-ready emulation of God's perfection.

67
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
The movie has a hushed sensual resonance, but it turns faith into an endurance test.

67
Austin Chronicle
Marc Savlov
At once eerie, picaresque, evocative, and utterly alien to the reality most viewers inhabit, Into Great Silence is a daring and breathtakingly constructed documentary dream. So much so that the more restless among us may find themselves nodding off.

25
Baltimore Sun
Susan Dunne
Try as I might, I could not love it, because as a piece of cinema, Into Great Silence would try the patience of a saint.


The average user rating for this movie is 9.1 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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