{"id":162,"date":"2009-04-05T22:44:50","date_gmt":"2009-04-06T03:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/?p=162"},"modified":"2021-08-26T09:55:29","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T14:55:29","slug":"silent-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/05\/silent-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Silent Light"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seeing Carlos Reygadas\u2019s Silent Light <\/em>(Stellet Licht)<\/em> for a second time at the Wisconsin Film Festival yesterday morning only confirmed that it\u2019s a truly great film. What surprised me, however, was how much more emotional this formal and austere film seemed on a second viewing. Reygadas somehow manages to imbue each scene with a sense of magical or ecstatic wonder \u2013 how is he able to do this? \u2013 only to set the viewer up for the intense internal conflict that his main characters suffer throughout the film.<\/p>\n

The film begins with a spectacular opening shot that moves from a cosmic starry night to the break of dawn on a rural landscape, which suggests that we might be witnessing creation. Set in a Mennonite community in rural Mexico where Plautdietsch is spoken, the story turns out to be remarkably simple. We watch Johan (Cornelio Wall) and Esther (Miriam Toews) with their brood of six children at breakfast. They seem like a normal, happy, and religious farm family, but once everyone leaves except for Johan, the camera moves closer and he sobs uncontrollably as he sits at the empty\u00a0table.<\/p>\n

We learn right afterwards from a conversation with his auto mechanic friend Zacarias that Johan has renewed a love\u00a0affair with a waitress named Marianne (Maria Pankratz). Zacarias encourages Johan to be true to his feelings and his destiny. Zacarias tells him: “Something very powerful has come over you. You\u2019ve found the woman nature meant for you. Very few people know what that is.” After what seems like interminable silence, Johan explains that Marianne is the better woman for him. Zacarias suggests that this is something even sacred. A Spanish pop song shifts the mood of the scene from anguish to light-hearted joy as the camera follows Johan\u2019s pickup truck as it drives in circular movements that suggest the power of sexual desire, while Johan sings along with the radio in anticipation of his tryst with Marianne. As Johan heads off, the camera holds on the shot until his truck disappears from the frame.<\/p>\n

Reygadas cuts to a shot of a fantastic landscape that reminds me of certain paintings by Verne Dawson, punctuated by the sound of insects. In an extended take, the camera follows Johan\u2019s feet as he tromps over yellow flowers in a field only to wind up on a woman\u2019s leg. We see a medium shot of Johan and Marianne from the side as the two of them stare at each other longingly. She removes his cowboy hat, and they kiss passionately for nearly two minutes as light flares into the lens. Reygadas cuts to a shot of Johan showering inside a stone building afterwards. The camera heads into the dark space, in which his naked body moves in and out of shadow. Marianne will later remark after they make love again, “I smell of sex.”<\/p>\n

Johan\u2019s affair turns out not to be a secret to Esther. His inability to forsake his adulterous relationship is a source of pain for all three of the people involved. This is true in all romantic love triangles, of course, but it\u2019s hardest on Esther, who remains a loving wife throughout the ordeal. It\u2019s no wonder that she literally dies of a broken heart during an intense rain storm \u2013 as if nature is reflecting her inner turmoil and weeping as bitterly as her. The shot of her collapsed body\u00a0at the trunk of a tree and her abandoned blue umbrella nearby is a particularly haunting image that lingers with us for a long time afterwards.<\/p>\n

What follows \u2013 the direct reference to Dreyer\u2019s masterful Ordet<\/em> (1955) \u2013 remains a source of controversy among film critics and scholars. My esteemed colleague David Bordwell<\/a> writes: “Ordet<\/em>, suffused with religious debate, earns its miraculous finale, while Silent Light<\/em>, for all its austerity, is a film of the flesh, and its spiritual coda seems to me somewhat forced. But I\u2019m willing to be convinced otherwise.” Yet the theological fine points of the ending, at least for me, remain beside the point \u2013 I can live with the ambiguity. Whatever the case, Silent Light <\/em>may be a film of the flesh, but it\u2019s clear that the religious beliefs of the characters only heighten the sense of Johan and Marianne\u2019s moral dilemma. Without the added contradictions of their religious beliefs, they wouldn\u2019t suffer nearly as much.<\/p>\n

When Johan later admits that he\u2019s made a mistake in marrying Esther in comparison to his love for Marianne, truth be told, it\u2019s really been compounded by six other mistakes born out of their union. And when, at Esther\u2019s suggestion, Johan takes his kids with him when he visits Marianne at the restaurant and then slips off to have passionate sex with her, he\u2019s really being downright sleazy, no matter what he tells himself. His brutal honesty with Esther about his actions with Marianne is actually a form of emotional torture.<\/p>\n

Marianne announces that she\u2019s breaking off their relationship afterwards. But as they rejoin his children who are watching TV in a van, Reygadas shoots them from behind, allowing us to view them clasping each other’s hand behind their backs. I always tells my film production students that you\u2019re always looking for the very best place to put the camera within a scene, and damned if Reygadas doesn\u2019t nail it every time \u2013 often in astonishing and incredibly unpredictable ways. This includes routinely flipping over the axis line. Rather than being jarring, here it seems like the most natural thing in the world.<\/p>\n

Reygadas is not known to be a filmmaker who relies on a traditional script. His films aren\u2019t written, but rather conceived in purely cinematic terms. Dialogue, for instance, is kept to a virtual minimum throughout the film \u2013 he often employs the power of silence over words.\u00a0It’s hard to imagine how Reygadas manages to get such affecting performances from non-professional actors, but he tells his story primarily through images and sounds. Like Antonio Campos\u2019s Afterschool<\/a><\/em> (which played at the festival) and Lance Hammer\u2019s Ballast<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>he also avoids non-diegetic music, so as not to manipulate the viewer\u2019s feelings. Reygadas pushes each shot in Silent Light<\/em> to its maximum potential. The stifling subtext of the situation allows him to create dramatic tension simply by extending the temporal duration of individual shots.<\/p>\n

When Johan visits his preacher father to inform him of the affair and his dilemma, the scene begins with his elderly parents leading cows into the milking parlor in a wide shot. We watch as the father and mother go through the elaborate process. Johan turns up unexpectedly and tells his dad: “I fell in love with another woman.” Avoiding eye contact, his father comments, “You\u2019re joking,” but nevertheless suggests that they go outside. When the door opens onto a snowy landscape, it gives us a surprising jolt. As the two take a walk into the field, the camera follows them from behind, allowing the sound of the crunching of their feet in the snow to enhance the dramatic tension. When they finally stop, the camera moves past them and pans across the landscape, suddenly transforming into a point-of-view shot. His father remarks, “Planting will be delayed this season, Johan,” suggesting an avoidance of the issue at hand. After the pan continues, the father finally asks whether Esther knows about it. The panning shot continues until it winds up framing them in a two-shot. Reygadas cuts to a wide shot of the landscape again, as the father suggests that they should go inside.<\/p>\n

Reygadas uses the awkward silence between the two men to heighten the drama of Johan\u2019s revelation. As Johan stares at a calendar on the wall, and Reygadas\u2019s camera focuses on it, the father finally tells him, “What is happening to you is the work of the enemy, Johan.” His son answers, “I think it\u2019s God\u2019s doing.” Johan sits down and asks his father to help him sort out which woman he should love. The camera focuses on an extreme closeup of the father\u2019s face that crops off his eyes, as he discusses falling for another woman shortly after Johan was born. He forced himself to break it off and counsels Johan that the feeling will pass. While not wishing to be in Johan\u2019s shoes, he also admits to feeling a sense of envy. The father doesn\u2019t offer advice, but suggests that if Johan doesn\u2019t act quickly, he runs the risk of losing both woman.<\/p>\n

Throughout Silent Light<\/em>, Reygadas uses sounds of nature \u2013 birds, insects, and animals \u2013 to convey the sense of a world that feels incredibly animated. Esther comments on this just prior to the rain storm. She expresses nostalgia for the past when the two of them were happy. Esther tells Johan, “However way it was, just being next to you was the pure feeling of being alive. I was part of the world. Now I am separated from it.” After a long pause, Johan answers, “I feel the same.” She responds, “How I wish it were all a bad dream. To close and open my eyes and be back in that time, in that feeling.” Shortly after that, raindrops appear on the front windshield.<\/p>\n

In Reygadas\u2019s pantheistic vision, the world is indeed a miracle. It is we human beings who manage to torture ourselves and each other with our inexplicable desires, thereby turning an earthly paradise into our own private hells.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seeing Carlos Reygadas\u2019s Silent Light (Stellet Licht) for a second time at the Wisconsin Film Festival yesterday morning only confirmed that it\u2019s a truly great film. What surprised me, however, was how much more emotional this formal and austere filmRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":161,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4305,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/4305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jjmurphyfilm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}