Review of Into Great Silence (2005) by Phillip L — 12 Jun 2007

It isn't until late in the film in which we learn of director Philip Groning's initial letter to the Carthusian monks in the documentary Into Great Silence. In 1984, he asked to be allowed to film within the monestary in the French Alps. He was refused with the possibility of filming in the future. Finally, 16 years after his initial request he was allowed to film within the monestary where no outsider has ever been. Certainly, the premise of the documentary should stir some amount of interest given the nature of the Carthusian monks and their self-imposed vow of silence and seclusion. However, the documentary fails to take advantage of its subject matter and ends up being a three hour romp of pretentious and utterly boring filmmaking.

The first twenty minutes offer a pretty strong representation of the remaining 2 hours and 40 minutes of the film. It's utterly devoid of soundtrack with only hints of natural sound. The stillness and silence evokes the overall tone of the film but it fails to advance much else. The film shows the life of the monks and their vow of silence. We get to witness the monks perform mundane tasks such as feeding animals around the monestary, farming, praying, reading, eating, chanting and almost anything else you can imagine a monk doing and little else. There's a few moments where new monks are initiated into the order and take their vows and there are some interviews with monks but nothing shocking or revelatory in the least.

The primary problem with the documentary is that it does little more than document the lives of these monks only allowing us to witness the action without delving into the motivations or tenents of these monks with any depth. In fact, upon watching the movie to the end I felt as if the documentary in this form would have worked better as a short. Everything of interest the documentary provided occured in the first 20 minutes and everything beyond just proved the futility and monotony of the rest of it. In essence, this reflects a structural flaw and a limitation of this particular documentary because it fails to enlighten its audience.

The film lacks a convincing entry point and little to help us understand this particular group of people. The only understanding Groning provides us is several pieces of text which appear to reflect the basis for this way of life. He chooses to re-use them several times and at seemingly random points as if to make sure the audience got the point even if they end up dozing off for 10 minutes here and there. Groning also pulls off some truly horrendous pieces of photography and editing throughout this piece. The film was shot in high-definition but looks about as pretty as a consumer camcorder with lots of grain and night scenes being completely obstructed. He also has the tendency to hold shots for far too long and often dips to black several times within the same scene. This gets particularly annoying at the end when it seems that it's over only to come back up to shot as if to cover the director's own inept filmmaking.

I was not entranced or taken with this film at all. The idea and the premise held a lot of potential but Groning failed to take advantage of it. As it stands, this should have been no longer than an hour at most and every further moment just reflects how inept and amateur the documentary is. In the end, I could hardly recommend this to anyone in the theater or at home unless you have lots of trouble sleeping. If you really must know abou the Carthusian monks, I recommend saving yourself the 3 hours and the boredom and to read the Wikipedia article. It's just as informative as this documentary and takes about a tenth of the time.