Toronto and NYFF preview. Stellet Licht.

"Silent Light [site] is by far the best film I've seen at this year's festival, marking a maturity in [Carlos] Reygadas's vision and a striking purity of the cinematic image," writes Michael Guillén.

"Carlos Reygadas disappoints with his follow-up to the brilliant two-fer Japón and Battle in Heaven," writes Keith Uhlich at the House Next Door. "At worst, Reygadas films his subjects with the indifference Bruno Dumont showed to landscape and character alike in Flandres."

Updated through 9/26.

"Many have called Silent Light an extended homage to Carl Dreyer's 1955 transcendentalist classic Ordet, but they're only half-right, in ways that are telling," writes Scott Tobias. "Yes, the film is set in isolation among the religiously devout. And yes, it closes with a moment of grace that unmistakably connects the two movies. But where Dreyer's world is narrow, suffocating, and punishingly austere - not that there's anything wrong with that, considering that I nearly wrote my Master's thesis on Ordet - Reygadas often proves himself a sensualist with more in common with Terrence Malick than Dreyer."

But his colleague at the AV Club dissents: "If I'm going to talk about the nagging artificiality of indie-twee movies like the apparently much-beloved-by-everyone-but-me Juno, it's only fair to note that I have a similar problem with syrup-paced art movies like the latest from the director of Japón and Battle in Heaven," writes a target="_blank" href="http://www.avclub.com/content/blog/toronto_film_festival_07_day_thre_0">Noel Murray. "But a lot of my cinephile friends - ones whose opinions I respect - really love this movie, so take my eye-rolling with a dose of mitigation."

"It might very well be a perfect film on its own accord, but for me its implications and staying power fall considerably short of Dreyer's masterwork," writes Doug Cummings.

"Silent Light, easily the best film I'll see at this festival, is a masterpiece of tone and form made by a talented man in full control of all his gifts," writes Steve at the Film Experience.

Update: "Though much ink has been spilled on Silent Light's magnificent opening and closing shots, it's hard to isolate one image in this film as being more powerful than the last," writes Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog. "One after another, Reygadas' long, slow ultra-wide shots, occasionally sprinkled with psychedelic lens flares, took my breath away. It's more like watching grass grow than paint dry, but either way, it's undoubtedly a film that rewards a certain viewing temperament. But If Reygadas seems to take a while to get from cut to cut, it's not because he's wasting time: he fills the spaces created by his characters' silences (awkward, intimate) with thunderous diegetic sounds, which themselves become catalysts for furthering the story."

Update, 9/26: "A work of singular cinematographic splendor, Silent Light is also a regression for Reygadas as an artist and activist thinker," writes Ed Gonzalez at Slant. "It's unfortunate, at once depressing and funny, that the ballsy Battle in Heaven, a tragic story of a kidnapping that cannily zeroes in on the effects a country's racial and class strife has on the consciousness of a lower-class people, gets called pretentious while this aloof, almost condescending study of emotional grief and spiritual conviction gets a free pass."

Posted by dwhudson at September 25, 2007 9:00 AM