thomryng | Die Große Stille

Which of Henry VIII's wives are you?

this quiz was made by Lori Fury

It figures, eh?

Into Great Silence, which we saw at SIFF last week, is ostensibly a documentary about the Carthusian monks of Grande Chartreuse.

I say ostensibly, because it is actually a great deal more and less than that. Like the lives of these monks themselves, this film is a meditation on silence. If you are looking for a typical documentary, with history facts and figures, a stirring orchestral soundtrack, and the earnest voice of Ken Burns or James Burke, you will, I fear, be sorely disappointed.

The film intead, documents in the purest sense. The camera follows the monks through the routine of their day and the seasons. They pray, they work, they eat; they do all the ordinary things you might expect a monk to do. But these monks do them in silence.

This film is two hours forty five minutes, of which there are perhaps fifteen minutes total of interview and dialogue.

Instead we hear the ordinary sounds of the world, sounds so common we normally don't hear them at all. In the darkened theatre, however, the shuffling of feet and the opening and closing of doors echo in the seats and begin to take on meaning beyond mere words. We hear the monks at chapel, chanting the hours. We hear birds in windblown trees, singing the days. And the bells, always the bells calling the monks and the audience to prayer.

The rasping sound of scissors cutting cloth was positively terrifying.

A handful of people in the audience couldn't stand the silence. They left.

The film is, as you might expect, intensely visual. We explore the faces of the monks as if they were the surfaces of alien worlds. Sometimes the camera will focus on an odd bit of the monks' world; the warm eggshell plaster wall of a room, the soft red glow of the tabernacle light in the darkened chapel, the stark white of snow, the intense green of the springtime garden.

At some point, it began to dawn on me that the film was not just a meditation on auditory silence, but also on visual silence. Silence isn't quiet by any means; there are always ambient sounds in nature because nature is alive and moving all the time. The silence we seek is the silence in our own heads and own hearts so that we may listen for God in the breeze.

In the same way, the world of these monks is visually silent. Set amid the stunning beauty of the alps, Grande Chartreuse is a world of stone and plaster and wood, of natural colours and shapes rough-hewn to human purpose. But if we think for a moment that this is a stark black and white and grey place of puritan sensibilities, the camera invites us to look closer.

Because in even the most basic things, there is a meticulous attention to detail that I found breathtaking.

Wooden floors are carefully inlaid in stately patterns. We catch a glimpse of a ceiling, painted with portrait cameos of long ago abbots. The seats in the choir are intricately carved.

And this meticulous attention to detail doesn't stop with the stately and the permanent. We see the monks exercise this intense mindfulness in everything they do, whether it's carefully fixing a hiking boot or measuring and cutting wood for the stoves or digging the snow from the garden. They are careful; they are methodical; they are living the hell out of the moment they're in.

What a contrast this was when we walked out of the theatre onto University Street in Seattle, with its cacophany of colour and noise. Every human projecting their lifestyle and image and style in what they wore and how they talked. Constant talk. Bright clashing colour. Jarring street noise. Everyone and thing projecting noise.

I was disoriented and had a hard time taking it in. Like I was stoned. It was just too much to process.

In fact, I rapidly discovered that the only way to function was to ignore huge swaths of it, to just not see the danger green dumpster in the alley or the constant crush of faces desperately trying to project their uniqueness.

I found I could only function in the city when I deliberately discarded that silence and mindfulness that we had just spent three hours cultivating. Ultimately, this film is not really a documentary about monks at all, but rather a damning indictment of the pace and frenzy of the modern world.

Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. (1 Kings 19:11-12)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

As is so frequently the case, you offer much of value for me to ponder.

Rather should it not be the highest praise that the cacaphonous world allows for and creates the respect for such a space as the Carthusians have? To ensure that such a highly priviledged group can continue to exist with anachronistic rules and behaviours? Is silence the exception rather than the rule and is this not why the messianic madness of the desert have infected millions who have never perhaps been still?

You have also always craved stillness and never have been able to internalize the modern and the crowded...they haven't been a part of you. This isn't damning it's just that you have a more pastoral (forgive the pun please) outlook on life.
I think that movie looks great.

"I found I could only function in the city when I deliberately discarded that silence and mindfulness that we had just spent three hours cultivating. Ultimately, this film is not really a documentary about monks at all, but rather a damning indictment of the pace and frenzy of the modern world."

Or is it that theirs is frenetic and noisy in other ways? From my contact with various Benedictine-derived groups, the cloister isn't always a physical thing, but an internal one.

The more I am in society the more I wish I were without it.

I neeeeeeed silence to recharge. Pure, green grassed, decaying wood, distant laughtered silence.

I get by fine because where I live is a thoroughly leafy, village-like part of town. Only 30 minutes away is The West End - our vast nightlife district. I cannot imagine a place less suited to me and though I've lived in this grand old Dame of a city I cannot bear to be in the West End at night. With all its pointless conversation, shocking exhibitionism and endless racket....it's a literal hell.

And it all affects me far too much. I'm far too sensitive to my environment.

Yet it's odd..the older I get I find myself avoiding 'fun' situations. I saw little point in going to the house warming party of one of my best friends tonight, so I didn't go!

Curiously the one thing I have been planning to do for months is to go to Worth Abbey for a weekend.

A cell. A bed. A cross. A bible. A cloister. And noooooottttthhhhhhing else.

DJSM.

Quietude, mindful solemnity and the natural flow of life rather than the altered and frenetic one is a soothing well from which we draw to slake our thirst.

I hope my dearest Thom now understands why I desire quiet so desperately. I am less able to turn down the barrage than he and it seems you are as well.

Hey Jayne!

It's odd...there are a good many 'loud' situations where I positively thrive...I'm commonly called an extrovert. Yet all such moments have one thing in common - having around me either my closest friends or my family of siblings or both.

Random loud moments just kill me - being with a large group of complete strangers.

Perfect moment - busy Irish pub with my brothers and father, a folk band playing something traditional, everyone laughing...the river of life running through us.

Hellish moment - with a friend in a large Italian restaurant with everyone yelling their heads off.

Still....give me a silent hillside over all else any day.

D.

I can't find the name of the other movie about silent orders, but I really enjoyed watching it and wondered if you had seen it. It was about a silent order who's vow of silence was lifted by the Vadican. The monks talked for the first time, some of them in years and years. I found it very insightful and moving. Wish I could remember the name!

I have lived in the silence of woods nearly nowhere. I'm not making it up. It was silent except for the distant highway and the neighbours' dog and cows. And dark. After the day, I went home to quiet. I talked to myself and my dog, but that's my usual. We walked the woods and fields. Silence except for the rest of the world was the norm. I wandered the woods and found many wondrous things in their season. Efts, orchids, mushrooms, violets... I wish I knew how those woods are now.

I find a city hard to adjust to, even though those in the city think that I live in the suburbs. The creeks are dead. No ponds. No vacant lots, even. My heart is stifled here, but I've brought a few friends to remind me of what is elsewhere. It helps.

And I'm Anne of Cleves.

Die Große Stille

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Damning?

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Amen brother

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Silence

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