{"id":2641,"date":"2007-03-09T19:05:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-09T19:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/carthusians-everywhere.html"},"modified":"2007-03-09T19:05:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-09T19:05:00","slug":"carthusians-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/carthusians-everywhere.html","title":{"rendered":"Carthusians everywhere!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steven Greydanus reviews Into the Great Silence<\/a><\/p>\n

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No interview footage furnishes psychological insights into the dispositions or motivations of the monks (apart from a single brief homiletical reflection late in the film). In contrast to nearly wordless nature documentaries like Atlantis<\/em><\/a>, Microcosmos<\/em><\/a> and Winged Migration<\/em><\/a> \u2014 or for that matter essentially the whole history of silent film \u2014 there is no nondiegetic music to provide emotional cues and mood support to the audience.<\/p>\n

The result is more than a documentary of monastic life. It is a transcendent meditation on the human pursuit of meaning, on man as a religious and social creature; on the form and function of symbols and ritual and tradition; on the rhythm of work and prayer, day and night, winter and spring. <\/p>\n

The silence is not total; the monks must speak, to celebrate the liturgy and other special functions, to accomplish certain necessary tasks, and on weekly outings from the monastery to socialize and discuss their life together. But if the silence is not absolute, it is still the point of reference; it gives meaning to the words, not the other way around. \u201cThe symbols are not to be questioned \u2014 we are,\u201d says one monk during one of those weekly outings. The monks don\u2019t question the silence, it questions them \u2014 and us, if we let it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He also previews an interview\/profile he did of the film’s director, to be published in Catholic World Report:<\/a><\/p>\n

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This style of filmmaking makes demanding viewing, and takes some adjusting to. Yet as Into Great Silence<\/em> progresses, a mysterious thing happens. Like the rule of the monastery, which the monks experience as a path of joy and liberation and inner peace, the film\u2019s very austerity becomes the bearer of something more. Almost imperceptibly, rigor and discipline are swallowed up in beauty, harmony and transcendence. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what a monastery is,\u201d Gr\u00f6ning said. \u201cIt\u2019s getting rid of all the superfluous stuff, and then things become much more transparent \u2014 time becomes transparent, objects too. There\u2019s this transparency, this inner freedom that comes, which is felt as joy, of course.\u201d <\/p>\n

Monasticism is common to many religious traditions, and much of the film would translate quite well for Buddhist audiences, say. At the same time, Into Great Silence<\/em> bears the stamp of the specifically Christian, Catholic, and Western character of its subjects, and for audiences of similar heritage the director feels the film will have a special personal resonance. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a film about contemplative life in Christian, Western culture,\u201d Gr\u00f6ning said. \u201cSo we can go into that much deeper than when we see a film about a Tibetan monastery. I don\u2019t have memories of being a Tibetan monk at the age of four, because I wasn\u2019t, you know? But I do have memories of a priest telling me something when I was six or seven. So a film that is showing the possibility of contemplation, meditation, inner peace, inner freedom in our culture, for people from a Western background, is something that\u2019s going to be deeply moving.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Via Fr. Finigan of Hermeneutic of Continuity<\/a> a brief (2+ minutes) video (seems as if it was part of a news program) about Portugese Carthusians at \u00c9vora<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steven Greydanus reviews Into the Great Silence No interview footage furnishes psychological insights into the dispositions or motivations of the monks (apart from a single brief homiletical reflection late in the film). In contrast to nearly wordless nature documentaries like Atlantis, Microcosmos and Winged Migration \u2014 or for that matter essentially the whole history of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nCarthusians everywhere! - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/carthusians-everywhere.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Carthusians everywhere! - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Steven Greydanus reviews Into the Great Silence No interview footage furnishes psychological insights into the dispositions or motivations of the monks (apart from a single brief homiletical reflection late in the film). 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}