Silent Light.

"The sun floods the wide sky in Silent Light like a beacon, spilling over the austere land and illuminating its pale, pale people as if from within," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "A fictional story about everyday rapture in an isolated Mennonite community in northern Mexico - and performed by a cast of mostly Mennonite nonprofessionals - the film was written, directed and somehow willed into unlikely existence by the extravagantly talented Carlos Reygadas, whose immersion in this exotic world feels so deep and true that it seems like an act of faith."

Updated through 9/26.

"Subject of a week-long retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, the Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas is part stuntmeister, part visionary - a post-Warhol impresario and trained diplomat who, flirting with fraudulence and often working without a screenplay, orchestrates conditions where nonprofessional actors are compelled to expose themselves, sometimes cruelly, on camera," writes J Hoberman in the Voice. "As understated as it is, [Silent Light] is both deeply absurd and powerfully affecting."

"[I]nstead of the aggressive provocation of [Battle in Heaven] and debut feature Japón, Silent Light finds Reygadas meditating on sex, sin, absolution and the miraculous through a tender, even gentle portrait of impulsive human beings running up against society's unspoken prohibitions," writes Michael Joshua Rowin in the L Magazine.

Earlier: Reviews from last year's editions of the Cannes, Toronto and New York film festivals.

Updates, 9/26: "Richly individualistic movies still get made," writes Ray Pride. "They're out there. Rich history cannot but produce rich potential. Looking back and forward, as the British Film Institute turns 75, they asked seventy-five figures to comment on 'Visions for the Future'... Composer Michael Nyman advocates Carlos Reygadas's amazing Silent Light, which has begun a one-week run at MoMA in Manhattan, for being 'an extraordinary, transcendent meditation on love and religion.'"

"Silent Light provokes awe: not just for its sheer beauty but for the astounding leaps in seriousness and maturity that Carlos Reygadas has made since his previous film, Battle in Heaven, a noxious, chilly exercise in corpulent copulation," writes Melissa Anderson in Time Out New York. "Opening and closing with majestic scenes of sunrise and sunset, Reygadas's third feature approaches grace."

Posted by dwhudson at September 24, 2008 7:58 AM