Cannes. Silent Light.

"Much like The Banishment, which screened a few days ago to near-universal disdain, Silent Light [Stellet Licht] is an unadorned tale of marital infidelity, with no real plot to speak of and an intense fascination with landscape and the contours of the human face," writes Mike D'Angelo at ScreenGrab. "But it's tone and judgment that matters in miniature epics like these, and [Carlos] Reygadas, for whom this film represents a massive leap in maturity, understands the difference between sullen brooding and quiet anguish. There's no way to convey the power of Silent Light without describing each individual shot, and even then you'd be overlooking their cumulative power; I can only tell you that I was rapt from start to finish, despite being the sort of Neanderthal film buff who generally prefers traditional narratives to beatific tone poems."

He then references Lars von Trier and, as it happens, another Dane comes to the mind of Manohla Dargis, who'll have more to say about the film in the New York Times. For now: "A story about grace and the fallen world, Silent Light owes a strong debt to the Danish master Carl Dreyer, even as it offers continued evidence of Mr Reygadas's own intense, individual artistry."

Same goes for Scott Foundas, writing in Variety: "Shades - and, by the end, big, unmistakable splotches - of Carl Dreyer's Ordet color Silent Light... [which] tells a muted story of adultery and spiritual crisis unfolding amidst a modern-day Mennonite community. Reygadas' typically arresting widescreen visuals and the presence of non-pro actors speaking in German-derived Plautdietsch makes for an initially hypnotic combination, but the spell breaks its hold well before the end of pic's inflated running time, signaling an endurance test for all but the most ascetic arthouse auds."

Kirk Honeycutt finds Silent Light "an allegorical tale of subtle strength and depth," but even so: "The long takes and studied silences still smack of pretension. An opening shot as the camera pans down from the night sky to capture dawn and the coming of a new day, while beautiful, does take six minutes. And that's just the movie's first shot."

Update: "Mexican auteurist Carlos Reygadas has lost nothing of the aesthetic austerity so magnificently, if exhaustingly, on display in his first two films, Japon (2002) and Battle in Heaven (2005)," writes Peter Brunnette for Screen Daily. "Unfortunately, while the demands are perhaps even greater, the payoffs are fewer and further between in Stellet Licht."

Update, 5/23: "Exceedingly languorous, Silent Light finally turns a significant corner a full hour and forty-five minutes into the film," notes Anthony Kaufman at indieWIRE. "But by then, it may be too late."

Update, 5/24: "One of the most intriguing sub-themes of Cannes '07 has been the reformed miserablist," writes Dennis Lim at IFC News. "Silent Light is a typically bold and even nutty experiment, with many bravura cinematographic feats and tricks..., but I must confess a preference for Reygadas the bad boy - there was more substance in the bile and misanthropy of Battle in Heaven than in the new film's ostentatious spirituality."

Update, 5/25: "The happiest surprise of the festival has been Silent Light, a film that continues to linger in my thoughts days after seeing it," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "Reygadas inserts us right in the middle of a strange world without preamble, letting us discover its mysteries, including its people, through the slow, steady accretion of gestures, daily rituals, conversational fragments and glimpses of life as it's experienced inside the private spaces of home and the larger communal spaces beyond."

Update, 5/26: "The style that predominates in current high-art festival films (ones, by the way, that rarely get much exposure in US movie houses) is minimalist," writes Mary Corliss for Time. "Based on the works of early masters like Carl-Theodor Dreyer and Robert Bresson, it follows certain rules, as restrictive as any Mennonite edicts: pare movie technique down to its essentials; show characters behaving, however mutely, rather than acting; make the viewer work for their epiphanies. This style has been responsible for many small, lugubrious films and - from directors who know how to make more or less - a few masterpieces. Silent Light is one of them."

Update, 5/31: Bilge Ebiri has the trailer at ScreenGrab.

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Cannes @ 60. Index.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 22, 2007 9:32 AM