Into Great Silence

I watched the most incredible 3-hour film yesterday called "Into Great Silence." While I've given you an Amazon.com link to purchase it, I won't recommend that you do so. This film has no plot, no dialogue, no music, no voice-overs to explain what you are viewing. What it does have is 3 hours of the experience of living as an ascetic monk in the Grand Chartruese monastery deep in the French alps. And this experience is absolutely amazing! You become as one of the monks living in the monastery; you experience the ebb and flow of their lives spent mostly in silence and structured around the bells that call them to prayer and ritual seven times a day. The sounds you hear are the sounds of their work: bells, Gregorian chants, chopping, shoveling, the rattle of dishes, the scrap of their boots and sandals down long, stone hallways, the calling the animals. You can almost feel the bitter cold as one monk clears the snow from his garden plots. You feel their intense joy as the monks slide down the mountainside in play.

No, I don't recommend that you buy this film...unless you are prepared to spend 162 minutes in contemplation, meditation and being intensely introspective. And also be prepared; you will ask yourself questions.