silent light

A truly extraordinary film. For the longest time I found it to be incredibly hard going. Then it all broke open for me. I can not find words to describe it. Transformative. Yes. A spiritual retreat requiring stamina. A lesson about the world - but communicating at a deep deep level. An elemental story that (the biggest surprise for me) turns out to be universal.

I copied the drawing by Riccardo Vecchio from the New Yorker capsule review last year.

This is from Manohla Dargis in the New York Times:
The sun floods the wide sky in “Silent Light” like a beacon, spilling over the austere land and illuminating its pale, pale people as if from within. A fictional story about everyday rapture in an isolated Mennonite community in northern Mexico — and performed by a cast of mostly Mennonite nonprofessionals — the film was written, directed and somehow willed into unlikely existence by the extravagantly talented Carlos Reygadas, whose immersion in this exotic world feels so deep and true that it seems like an act of faith. Mr. Reygadas’s faith may be more rooted in his own gifts than in God, but it’s the sheer intensity of this belief — which he confirms with every camera movement — that invests his film with such feeling.