GRADE: 9
In a Mennonite community in Mexico, a father’s faith is tested when he falls in love with a new woman.
Original Title: Stellet Licht
Director: Carlos Reygadas
Country of Origin: Mexico | France | Netherlands | Germany
Thoughts:
Slow and deliberate with long static shots, Reygadas’ film puts one in the mind of the most austere directors, like Bresson and Dreyer. Silent Light, in fact, has much in common with Dreyer’s own Ordet, and plays like an homage to that earlier movie, moved to a new location and community. The characters in the film, though deeply, conservatively religious, come across as wholly non-judgmental—just a group of human beings doing their level best to maneuver in a difficult situation. Their earnestness makes the pain of the affair they find themselves enmeshed in all the more palpable and resonant. Never has a movie so convincingly presented love as a tragedy that happens to you, an affliction beset upon you that is outside your control. It destroys each of the characters in turn, but ultimately rehabilitates them, too.