SummaryJohan and his family are Mennonites from the north of Mexico. Against the law of God and man, Johan falls in love with another woman. (Bac Films)
SummaryJohan and his family are Mennonites from the north of Mexico. Against the law of God and man, Johan falls in love with another woman. (Bac Films)
A film filled with beauty and pain that moves at the pace of molasses and snails. That is to say, some of it is in real time. Audiences would be advised to stay caffeinated.
The finest film to date of one of the most important emerging filmmakers. Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light is an experience rather than a movie. Very rewardable.
Every scene could be counterposed as an impressionist art piece and the plot is meant to trigger your inner philosopher rather than your outer romantic. Basically it is a film that is meant to make you feel something - what the hell?
The film was written, directed and somehow willed into unlikely existence by the extravagantly talented Carlos Reygadas, whose immersion in this exotic world feels so deep and true that it seems like an act of faith.
Much of what happens in Silent Light can feel painstakingly mundane: milking cows, harvesting wheat, a long drive at night in and out of shadows. Yet throughout, there's a sense of something ominous impending, and while it remains gentle, the ending is genuinely startling.
It's amazingly beautiful and it tests your patience; both things are par for the course with Reygadas, After that, you've either surrendered to his idiosyncratic sense of rhythm, or you're out of there.
This film is a beautiful, but trying slide show of European style art film mostly made up of wide angle symmetry (often with a lighted doorway window in the center) on a stationary camera on a tripod. The closest it gets to action is when the camera occasionally pans or slowly zooms. The subtitles are barely necessary since there is very little dialogue. And it works wonderfully. There is an intriguing reference to Gabriel García Márquez's and Lisandro Duque Naranjo's "Milagro En Roma" in the film.
If you like to watch paint dry in slow motion, then this is for you. A 20 minute plot dragged out to over 2 hours. Basically the Director points the camera at someone/something then moves the camera in at a snails pace.
Silence without something to say. Gestures that say nothing, or very little. Tears that scream so loud, but words that say so little. Lives without movement, but light that illuminates the soul. This film finds what it does not look for. It is lost in simple cinephile winks, abstractions and in visual complacencies. It is not a reflection on the nature of the soul, it is simply a mirror to it ... but it only reflects and does not make us look.
Production Company
Mantarraya Producciones,
No Dream Cinema,
Bac Films,
ARTE,
Andromeda Films,
Arte France Cinéma,
Estudios Churubusco Azteca S.A.,
Fondo para la Producción Cinematográfica de Calidad (FOPROCINE),
Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía (IMCINE),
Motel Films,
Nederlands Filmfonds,
Ticoman,
World Cinema Fund