
Don't mind us, we're just watching the paint dry…er, watching Silent Light.
By Anthony Buchanan
Silent Light unfolds organically to reveal a tale of fate. Widely circulated cinema rarely has the patience to achieve true meditative continuity throughout each frame, but Carlos Reygadas' new masterpiece is proof this kind of cinema still exists. The audacity of the opening image of the film—a five-minute slow shot of a complete sunrise, from darkness to full light—transcends the cinematic illusion and takes viewers into a quiet world in which people seem like players in a magnificent legend. The characters seem predestined in their actions, an effect rarely rendered so well on-screen.
The story, set in a Mennonite community in Mexico, seems to exist outside time; the citizens are mostly farmers who still speak in an archaic German dialect. Johan (Cornelio Wall) is a man introduced through the most gentle of compositions and organic action. A poor and humble worker, he lives with humility and love for his family but struggles underneath. In the first images of Johan, he sits at the breakfast table until his family has left, then begins to sob solemnly. The camera gives him his space but probes with discreet dignity. With the same humbleness, Johan later confides to his friend about an affair he is having, despite devotion to his wife.
His new love is genuine, and Reygardas' direction refuses to condemn Johan for his painful inner desire. In the most liberating scene, Johan declares to his friend that he is off to meet his mistress Marianne (Maria Pankratz) as he drives in circles for the sheer pleasure of driving in circles. The car rounds the camera again and again with childlike innocent frenzy. The scene has the sincerity of ritual and the underlying joy of celebration.
Johan's secrets are never treated with exciting adulterous swing or naughty fetish. Pankratz' Marianne has a dignified edge that resonates with tenderness; she has not a trace of femme fatale seductiveness. Their moments of intimacy are never rushed, and the feeling is one of spiritual kinship rather than lust fulfillment. Soon Johan's pious wife Esther (Miriam Toews), equally endearing but pitiable in Reygadas' hands, begins to suspect the affair. Her emotions are restrained, but tension and distant shots of her emphasize her frailty in the larger drama of which she is merely a part.
Reygadas' cinema contains a high level of mystery; he has plunged himself into a mythical landscape in which characters act with otherworldly grace and where the landscape itself seems to speak the emotions for the people. The Mexican hills and fields are the soul of these isolated individuals. They toil it, harvest it and, in quiet moments, the serene green hills or the devastating rain express the characters' hidden emotions more than they are willing to voice. The silent space and light of the landscape are testaments to Reygadas' truly lyrical vision.
Directed and Written by Carlos Reygadas
With Cornelio Wall, Maria Pankratz, Miriam Toews, Peter Wall, Jacabo Klassen
145 min., NR