Review of Into Great Silence (2005) by Nate B — 29 May 2008

Great idea, great subject, great soundtrack. The actual film making, however, I thought not so good. I was irritated by the framing of a lot of the shots, which seemed overdesigned, calculated to produce an aesthetic reaction in the viewer somewhat akin to a glossy magazine spread or a gap commercial.

The "ah, isn't that beautiful" reaction, which can shade over into kitsch pretty easily. The saturated colors bugged me somewhat, too... I say, let the experience speak for itself. No need to jazz it up or get psychedelic with the falling raindrops and flickering candles.

Also extremely irritating: the editing. He kept intercutting different shots, or cutting from a mid-distance shot to a close-up back to a mid-distance shot (He even occasionally used the dreaded fade).

Of course, objectively, the pace of these cuts was relatively restrained. However, given the subject matter, the lack of dialogue, the simplicity of the tasks and scenes depicted, his editing style seemed like an MTV-style barrage.

This was a movie that was begging for some tracking shots or some zooms... respect the filmic integrity of the moment, I say. The sort of "design" vibe was enhanced by the lack of much actual content re: their beliefs, their stories, etc.

Which is really just a directorial decision--to show the daily rituals of these lives, rather than to explain or contextualize them. But it's probably not a decision that I would have made... or, having made that decision, I'd have opted for a less glossy, more documentary-style approach.

Show the dirt, show the mundane, etc. Don't try to suffuse every shot with the aura of the divine, esp. when all that one can really summon is the kind of gleam that comes off of an automobile in a car commercial.