Into Great Silence

Into Great Silence is a 2005 documentary showing the everyday lives of a community of Carthusian monks living in the French Alps. It's a quiet, medtitative reflection on the lives of these monks. Wikipedia talks about how the film came to be made:

The idea for the film was proposed to the monks in 1984, but the Carthusians said they wanted time to think about it. The Carthusians finally contacted Gröning 16 years later to say they were now willing to permit Gröning to shoot the movie, if he was still interested.

There are no English subtitles, but if you have any French or German it's fairly simple. Even if you don't, there's so little spoken or written that I can't help but feel I didn't miss much.

via youtube:



It's on the Arts and Faith list of 100 most spiritually significant films, where they say, "Here is a film that dares to explore the possibility of finding God, of a God who is there for those who seek him with their whole hearts." Tricycle calls it "an elegant look into life at La Grande Chartreuse, a Roman Catholic monastery in the French Alps home to the monks and nuns of the Carthusian Order". EW gives it a B- and says, "For two hours and 42 minutes, Into Great Silence offers painterly images of an existence that is, almost literally, too reverent for words." Roger Ebert says it "unfolds with its own gentle, unforced rhythms, designed, as German filmmaker Philip Groning has said, to be less a "documentary" than a meditation." Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 87%.