Silent Light (Stellet licht)

My first full day in New York had been a three-movie day. On Monday I thought I would go for another triple, but this time I would start out in the Village.

My cousin had class that day, so I was on my own. On a warm sunlit morning I took the IRT all the way down to Chambers Street, then walked back up to the West Village, arriving at the Film Forum on West Houston street just before one o'clock. I was actually hoping to catch a showing of American Madness (1932), a Frank Capra classic in which Walter Huston has to stop a run on a Wall Street bank during the Depression. It's one of my favorite movies, but it wasn't showing anymore.

But Silent Light was showing in just fifteen minutes, and it was on my list anyway, so I bought a ticket. The Film Forum (map) is a very nice arthouse theater, modern in decor and very clean. I took a seat in the third row and watched the arthouse trailers, which included an upcoming showing of Jean-Luc Godard's Made in U.S.A. (1966). I was really beginning to feel like I was in New York at this point.

Then the movie started. The screen was completely dark. The sounds of the countryside grew softly---crickets, the moo of cattle, bullfrogs. We sat and watched the dark screen as the minutes rolled by with just these sounds. It seemed a very imaginative way to start a movie---just a black screen with sounds of the outdoors, and a farm.

Then there were voices---in a dialect of German. A woman was talking. A man was talking. A clock was ticking.

At this point, everyone in the audience began to start looking around. It soon became apparent that something was wrong. The screen wasn't supposed to be dark. One of the theater employees came in and announced they were going to start the movie over from the beginning. After a few minutes, they restarted, this time with the projector turned on all the way.

So it wasn't that avant-garde of a movie. It actually had images to go with the sound after all. Only in the West Village would something like this have happened, with everyone just sitting there, thinking that was the way it was supposed to be.

The film as a whole is somewhat hard to describe, although the premise is fairly straightforward. In a Russian Mennonite community in Chihuahua, Mexico, a farmer with a wife a children has an affair with an another Mennonite woman. At the beginning of the movie, the man has just informed his wife of the affair. Throughout the story he continues the affair, while his wife seemingly tolerates it without complaint. The man debates with himself and others about the nature of God, and whether or not his desire for the other woman is holy or unholy.

But like I said, it's sort of hard to describe the movie. For one thing it is very slow moving in parts, with each scene developing slowly like a Polaroid picture. That's very much the style of the director, Carlos Reygadas. Moreover, all the actors are non-professional Mennonites from the surrounding community in Mexico.

Perhaps the weirdest thing about the movie is that it doesn't seem like Mexico at all, but like the United States. Almost all the dialogue in the movie is in Plautsdietch, the dialect of Low German spoken by the Mennonites.

Since the plot is fairly simple, it's hard to discuss the story without giving away the ending, which has a surprise twist, one that can leave you scratching your head at first.

After the movie ended, one of the men in the audience said outloud in full voice: "Does anyone know why she woke up?" (this won't mean anything until you see the movie).

A young bearded man, of college age, replied, "It helps to have seen Dryer's Day of Wrath."

"Holy Mackerel!" I thought to myself. "Now I know I really am in the Village, when people start citing Carl Theodor Dryer to help clear up confusion."

Afterward I went to the men's room. In the hallway, the same young man was angrily accosting the older man who had spoken up. "You don't say things like that in the movie! This is a work of art! That was so incredibly rude! You don't go into a museum and start asking people, 'So why did the artist use a paintbrush?'"

Yup, I was in the Village, all right.

Silent Light was on many critics' Top Ten lists for 2008. At first, after the movie ended, I was sort of wondering why, because it felt over my head. But a funny thing has happened in the last few days. The movie has really grown on me enormously. I can't really explain why yet, because it indeed is quite surreal in its narrative. Somehow it all makes sense even if it doesn't seem to make sense. It seemed very...alive somehow. I guess I'll just keep my mouth shut until I can figure it out. After all, like the dude says, it's art.