I have adapted the title of this post from my colleague Steven Rea's review of the film Into Great Silence - a documentary about the monastery of la grande Chartreuse - which I finally got around to watching last night. I was reminded while watching it of something Pascal wrote, that "the sum of a man's problems come from his inability to be alone in a silent room." Philip Gröning's film demonstrates what it depicts: There is no voice-over explaining things; the viewer is simply drawn in to the monks' austere and largely silent world. Its tempo is the same as the monks'. One thing I noticed was how deliberately they seemed to perform their tasks. They did not seem preocupied with getting them done, but were content with doing them. Of course, doing things that way would enable one to turn whatever one does into a prayer, since it would be the doing, not the getting done that counted, and everything, in its every detail, would prove worthwhile. The deliberate pace and quietness of the film are at first unsettling. It is a film about act, not action. Gröning has created something rare, if not unique: a contemplative movie.
Into Great Silence Q &A with Father Michael Holleran
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