a symphony of silence: true believers
by
Douglas Messerli
Philip
Gröning Die große Stille (Into Great Silence) / 2005
Philip Gröning’s 2005 documentary
film, Into Great Silence takes us for almost 3 hours into a world we
might never have known and certainly would never have heard from: the
Carthusian monks of the Grande Chartruse, who live under a vow of silence, dedicating
their lives to prayer and music. If there seems to be a slight contradiction in
this, where singing is central and speaking is restricted, that is, in a sense,
what the film is really about.
Gröning first asked the order for permission
to film their activities in 1984, and it took the group 16 years to make their
decision: he would be allowed if he alone did the filming and used real
lighting. The result is quite remarkable.
As anyone who has read my several
volumes of writing will know, I am not entirely sympathetic with formal
religion. But in this film’s evidence of the brothers’ complete commitment to
their beliefs and to their community—each taking on special tasks from
gardening, farming, cooking, delivering meals, singing, bell-ringing, house cleaning,
barbering, clock repair, and administration—that we cannot but marvel at their
simple but beautiful lives high in the French Alps.
And then, despite its rather austere
title (in German Die große Stille, “the great silence”), the film is
anything but silent. Like a John Cage performance, the overwhelming noise of
the order is front and center: the constant creak of the cart as its driver
delivers the food, the footsteps of the brothers as they move along the gothic
corridors, the hourly ringing of the bell, even the voice of the brother who
feeds the cats (evidently the order allows verbal communication with animals)—all
reveal that the rhythm of these monks’ lives is very much involved with noise.
And then there is their endless epistolary activities that Gröning reveals through the piles of letters on the
head-monk’s desk and through the daily mail that the individual monks receive.
Nature, through rains, the melting
icicles of spring, and the heavy shovel of the gardener monk used in order to
reclaim his summer gardens, the water streaming down the mountains, the numerous
bird-calls, an occasional jet plane overhead (more silent than the nature
around them), even their antiphonal crack of their knees as, one by one, these
mostly elderly men bend to the floor in their communal meetings, all create a
great commotion of sound. And then there are their occasional outings in the
countryside where they are permitted to talk, discussing their habits of
cleanliness in relation to other orders. The whiz of the electric razors which
trim their hair…everything here creates a kind of avant-garde symphony, if one
is only willing to listen.
And then there is their beautiful
music, seemingly Gregorian-like chants sung in unison, so wonderfully sung and
clearly so meaningful for their self-expression that one does, at moments, want
to cry. These are their major verbal expressions, and we watch with awe as a
young, apparently African novitiate attempts in his cell to learn them with a
small key-board accompanied by his voice. It is clear he will ultimately bring
this group more of what they so very much love.
It took me three days to actually watch
this deeply intense movie. There is only so much silence I, a truly urban
dweller, can bear. But each time I watched, I found myself opening the window
to more carefully hear the sounds of the doves, the hummingbirds, and other
natural beings who inhabit our condominium garden before, once more, turning on
the endless patter of the news which I watch every day.
When I was in college singing in the
Madison, Wisconsin Presbyterian church choir, someone in our midst arranged a
trip to Chicago, where we met, for the afternoon, with members of a silent
order in Chicago. They had broken their vow just for lunch and our afternoon
visit. I recall how peaceful they all appeared, how delighted they were just to
be able to explain their views of the world without at all attempting to
convert us to their way of life. They simply demonstrated it without even
attempting to evaluate their or our world. It was. Nothing more or less.
Watching Gröning’s film, I felt that same
humility. These monks were not trying to sell us anything. They were what they
were: true believers. Evidently, after seeing the director’s final cut, they
were all happy with the result. The peace and loving of their lives was
apparent even through the frame of the camera.
Los
Angeles, June 27, 2019
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (June 2019).
No comments:
Post a Comment