Into Great Silence

 Though a few years late to the party, I recently watched Into Great Silence, a documentary on the Carthusian monks of Grande-Chartreuse in France. A bit of background:

In 1984, German filmmaker Philip Gröning wrote to the Carthusian order for permission to make a documentary about them. They said they would get back to him. Sixteen years later, they were ready. Gröning, sans crew or artificial lighting, lived in the monks’ quarters for six months—filming their daily prayers, tasks, rituals and rare outdoor excursions. This transcendent, closely observed film seeks to embody a monastery, rather than simply depict one—it has no score, no voiceover and no archival footage.

At over two hours long, it requires a bit of concentration and stamina. I’ve always been fascinated by monasticism, and this film felt like the best introduction to the subject I could have asked for.

What was most engaging was the way the film stripped away the external mystery of monastic and eremetic life, thus giving the viewer a glimpse of the sense of interior mystery that pervades the life of the monks.

I think that most people who watch this film are like me in the sense that they perceive monastic life as shrouded in layers of mystery. Embracing the isolated, ascetic lifestyle the Carthusians practice is essentially a rejection of everything that we in modern Western society accept as defining characteristics of life. Combined with the fact that monks of this sort are largely invisible to us by virtue of their isolation, the Carthusians feel inscrutable. I felt surprise at the presence of bottled water in one monk’s cell, and at the intrusion of other modern, manufactured goods. My incomplete understanding of monasticism led me to apply my own bias and prejudices; that is, my mental picture of monasticism was more caricature than photograph. One of the films great successes was humanizing the Carthusians. Despite the separation their chosen path creates between us, the film reminded me that these are, fundamentally, men like me. They perform chores, they read, they joke with each other and play in the snow: the result being that the depth of the cultural gulf that divides us is bridged by our basic humanity.

Dispersing bits of the external mystery, though instructive, didn’t exactly lead to understanding. But this, to me, is the most beautiful aspect of the film. By removing the blinding cloth of ignorance from my eyes, I was able to glimpse what is truly noble about their devotion. It is trough the simplicity of their lives that they are able to pursue the most complex subject of all: the mystery of God.