Movie Review: Into Great Silence

Some movies will think for you. Others will cause you to think. Into Great Silence belongs to the latter.

In 1984, German filmmaker Philip Gröning sought to make a documentary about the life of the Carthusian monks in the French Alps. Sixteen years later, the monks said they were ready to film. The film took two years to make, following the daily routines of monastic life.

At first, I didn’t know what to expect. There were no violent explosions, sneaking velociraptors, CGI effects or thrilling action sequences to speak of. There were no suspenseful plot twists or clever dialogues. Just the simple life of the monks as they gave themselves to reflection, meditation, and worship.

While the movie has a beginning and an ending, after a while, time seems to disappear. Everything modern disappears, in fact, until you feel like you are living in the mountains with the monks – washing dishes, feeding animals and chanting in the midnight watch. Into Great Silence confronts our love affair with sound. It speaks to the beauty of the quiet, the hush of the Holy.

We live in an age that’s unfamiliar and suspicious of silence. Any radio host will tell you that dead air is wasted air. But silence has a way of teaching us how to speak. Perhaps it is in the quiet places that we learn obedience the best.

Into Great Silence stands alone as a genre of spiritual film both that has unique informational qualities and remarkable transformational potential.

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