Into Great Silence

Into Great Silence (Die Grobe Stille) 2005

This documentary was filmed in the Grande Chartreuse, the head monastery of the reclusive Carthusian Order in France. Philip Groning, the German director and writer first approached the monastery sixteen years ago for permission to film; he was told that it would not happen soon, and indeed it didn’t. However, as you watch the documentary you will appreciate how time is something that is not hurried.

Unbeknownst to me this was a movie that the viewer participated in! By which I mean, you sat there for three hours watching a move with about as many words as in a three minute song. That said, by the end of the movie I would willingly have sat through it again straight away.

The opening introduction is very slow and it takes 25 minutes before you hear a sound. The opening shots show a row of identical buildings with black roof’s that looked just like Dutch burghers with their tall black hats accentuated by the fact that snow is falling.

Philip Groning lived in the monestry for six months and thus he films the monks daily rituals, prayers, tasks and weekly forrays to the outside world. In fact, so little is going on that you soon begin to appreciate the small things in life, very small, such as the grain in the wood on the floors, the ice crystals on the lettuces in the garden, and the water dripping from the roof very, very slowly. The photographer places great emphasis on light in the documentary which made me think of God saying, “Let there be light” and there was (Genesis 1.3). The documentary builds quietly upon itself and ¾ of the way through it you feel that everything is at one with nature or to put it another way, that to disturb nature is an affront, to live in harmony with it is not.

Every cell appears to have a window that opens out to the wonderful scenery outside. It is this natural world that provides substance to the soul and food for the body. There were a couple of shots of the white cows with their bells ding aligning as they moved around the land munching at whatever, and you thought "what a life” even if later on in their life they are their source of food for the monks.

The monastery is in the Chartreuse Mountains (part of the French Alps) in Eastern France and the original building goes back to 1084. When it rained, the rain seemed like a joyful gift. When the mist hovered over the range it seemed the mist was actually spirits, and when the monks sang their beautiful Gorgonian chants it felt as if they were singing to the spirits, thus creating a bridge to the “other” world.

Today the monastery is closed to the public and the monks support themselves by the production and sale of Chartreuse liqueur, which interestingly was not captured in the documentary at all which seems an ommission.

Toward the end of the documentary the film maker interviewed a very elderly monk on his thoughts about dying. The monk said he was not afraid of death, "the faster you run to God the happier you are". I then recalled how death is a word that you don’t hear much spoken in the U.S. we prefer to use other words such as “passing on” or “deceased” and it made me wonder why such a Christian nation is afraid of death.