Hey Hey We're the Monks
Jul. 15th, 2011 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogLast night, Eleanor and I finished one of the quietest, and yet most well-spoken, pieces of cinema we've ever seen.
The priest who did last Saturday's funeral mentioned it during his homily. The deceased was the regular organist at his parish, and Father Bob spoke of how important the liturgy was to George, both as a means of projecting grace to the rest of the sanctuary and as a means of receiving it himself in his own life. He then told of this film- called Into Great Silence- which follows the daily routines and rituals of the community of monks at the Grande Chartreuse monastery, all of whom have taken a vow of silence. It is only broken during services, by a select group of elders who get a weekly conversation, and, with permission, by a few who were permitted to be interviewed for the film. These moments take up perhaps a dozen of the 162 minutes in the film. The rest is broken only by the sounds of their comings and goings, by the occasional pealing of church bells, and by sounds of nature.
As the Father predicted, it was not the least bit boring. There's always That Moment for me, anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour-and-change into a film at home, where I quietly check the timer on the DVR to see how far it's come, and the lower the number, the lower my interest. This one, despite its near-silence, didn't have that moment until well into the second hour.
Among the rules set by the monastery for permission to film: no soundtrack music. It took them 16 years to respond to the filmmaker's original request to come in and do the movie. All things considered, it was more than worth the wait.
The priest who did last Saturday's funeral mentioned it during his homily. The deceased was the regular organist at his parish, and Father Bob spoke of how important the liturgy was to George, both as a means of projecting grace to the rest of the sanctuary and as a means of receiving it himself in his own life. He then told of this film- called Into Great Silence- which follows the daily routines and rituals of the community of monks at the Grande Chartreuse monastery, all of whom have taken a vow of silence. It is only broken during services, by a select group of elders who get a weekly conversation, and, with permission, by a few who were permitted to be interviewed for the film. These moments take up perhaps a dozen of the 162 minutes in the film. The rest is broken only by the sounds of their comings and goings, by the occasional pealing of church bells, and by sounds of nature.
As the Father predicted, it was not the least bit boring. There's always That Moment for me, anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour-and-change into a film at home, where I quietly check the timer on the DVR to see how far it's come, and the lower the number, the lower my interest. This one, despite its near-silence, didn't have that moment until well into the second hour.
Among the rules set by the monastery for permission to film: no soundtrack music. It took them 16 years to respond to the filmmaker's original request to come in and do the movie. All things considered, it was more than worth the wait.
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Date: 2011-07-15 02:48 pm (UTC)It was so beautiful. I got lost in int.
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Date: 2011-07-15 02:53 pm (UTC)There's a monastery near where I grew up that has a similar vow of silence; the difference is that they play a lot of music. We did a few concerts there.
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Date: 2011-07-15 05:00 pm (UTC)To this day, it is the basis of comparison, the unit of measurement against which we compare how boring something is. Like absolute zero.