Product Description

Silent Light is the latest breathtaking work from Carlos Reygadas, the controversial and prestigious director of the award-winning Battle in Heaven and Japón. Johan is the head of a family in a Mennonite community in northern Mexico. However, he goes against the law of both God and men by falling in love with another woman and, although he is honest with his wife about the affair, his actions create conflict in their otherwise serine and tranquil existence. An enlightening and engaging exploration of moral and spiritual crises, Silent Light's poetic tone at times invokes Dreyer, Bergman and even Kubrick as it weaves its intricate and brilliant way to one of cinema s most exquisite finales. A modern classic from one of the greatest film-makers of our time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8320 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-04-14
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: German
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 136 minutes

Synopsis
With SILENT LIGHT, Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas (JAPON, BATTLE IN HEAVEN) delivers an extraordinary, transcendent meditation on love and religion. To capture the innocence necessary to tell his tale, Reygadas ventured to a Mennonite community in northern Mexico, where the inhabitants live like relics from another era. Rather than falsifying his world, Reygadas cast the film with actual Mennonites who speak the German dialect Plattdeutsch, which gives the film an even greater authority--and further establishes a truly original tone. The story concerns Johan (Cornelio Wall Fehr), who is in the midst of a major spiritual crisis. A devoted father, and a husband to Esther (Miriam Toews), Johan has found himself caught up in an affair with a waitress named Marianne (Maria Pankratz). But his connection with Marianne isn't just a physical one; he fears that he's fallen in love with her. The honest and tortured Johan confesses to Esther, spurring a series of cataclysmic events that will test his faith once and for all.


From the luminous opening shot--which is without question one of the most stunning opening shots ever committed to celluloid--it becomes clear that this is a much different film than Reygadas's last, the graphic and blunt BATTLE IN HEAVEN. While it appears that Reygadas was deeply influenced by Carl Theodor Dreyer’s ORDET, as well as the works of Terrence Malick, SILENT LIGHT is not merely a carbon copy of those films. It is the work of a visionary filmmaker who is challenging himself and trying to address genuinely deep human issues. Beautiful and profound, SILENT LIGHT is cinema at its most breathtaking.

Review
Overwhelmingly powerful --The Guardian

Review
Rivetingly beautiful --Sight & Sound

Customer Reviews

Masterpiece for insomniacs
This film is very artisitic. Each scene as it's presented on screen looks a bit like a painting - whether it's a farm on a desert landscape or two guys in cowboy hats having a conversation in exactly the same position on each side of the screen with a symetrical landscape in the background. In fact one scene in particular looks more like a painting than footage of real life. The film has also got realistic dialogue and some of the footage is clever like a close up of someones feet walking over fragile yellow flowers through a field. The feet belong to a man who is walking towards a woman who he is having an affair with. The problem with this film (which in many ways is a masterpiece) is that it is so slow. Loads of scenes are maybe a minute long where nothing happens. You're just faced with a picture of a desert and this is followed by a picture of a farmhouse in the desert, followed by a picture of the kitchen in the house. It took me a number of attempts to watch this film because I kept falling asleep. There's no sound-track either so loads of scenes often have no sound what so ever. I appreciate the style of this film to a degree and there's a lot to be said for long pauses which create atmosphere and might say more than a stream of dialogue but the director left each scene too long. Interesting film but doesn't quite work.

Ravishing photography, langorous pace
This is a visual experience rather than an auditory one. The photography and framing of shots is stunningly beautiful. Sometimes the director holds a picture so long that it looks almost like a still of a painting. There is a quiet stillness about the film that is very soothing and the antithesis of the frenetic-style of many Hollywood movies. The story unfolds so slowly it seems as if it's a fly-on-the-wall documentary with little editing. There are long pauses between almost monosyllabic dialogue, but one keeps watching as one wants to know the outcome of the love-triangle that is the central story.

an unfamiliar tribe
Johan belongs to the traditional, deeply religious Mennonite community in north Mexico. A happily married family man, he violates the ethos of the community by falling in love with another woman. All is open and there are no secrets, but this does not diminish the agony of the participants as we move to the tragic conclusion and the ambiguous miracle. Some will be irritated by the long, slow takes, but these are becoming Reygadas signature and the film should be seen for its original style, its insights into a strange community and some exquisite wide screen photography of the flat farmland [sometimes as background to a immobile face]