Die Grosse Stille

My favourite film of the moment has got to be `Die Grosse Stille'. The English edition 'Into Great Silence' has not yet been released on DVD so I ordered the original German one and have watched it all the way through twice (it is nearly three hours long). The paucity of my German doesn't make a great deal of difference since much of the film is silent anyway. It is a really beautiful film, a sort of fly on the wall documentary about the lives of the 20 or so monks who live in the Carthusian order's motherhouse of La Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps. The director, Philip Groening was only given permission to make the film after waiting for 16 years to do so. He lived with the monks for several months on condition that he did all the filming himself. The Carthusians lead the most intensely contemplative life of any religious order, in fact they are really an order of hermits who come together three times a day (including the long Carthusian night office, which interrupts the monks' two three to three and a half hour sessions of sleep) to pray. Their only conversation takes place on the weekly spaciamentum (walk outside the monastery walls), otherwise their life consists of solitary prayer and work in their cell. Why anyone would choose to follow this seemingly harsh and unremitting lifestyle was answered by Philip Groening when he said: "I think they simply do it because they choose to... become close to God. It's a very simple concept, the concept is God himself, is pure happiness, the closer you move to that, the happier you are." There is very little action in this film. It is marked by the changing of the seasons and the timeless routine of the monastic day rather than any plot. Nevertheless, it provides an aesthetically pleasing and fascinating insight into an ascetic lifestyle which has remained practically unchanged since the eleventh century.

As an afterthought, there was no reference in the film to the liqueur which these monks manufacture - Green Chartreuse. My favourite tipple happens to be a shot of this on ice with tonic water. Very nice indeed.

Bone Idle