Die Grosse Stille

I know I have a very limited knowledge of catholic religiosity. The way I tend to think about "catholicism" is, I suppose, influenced by many preconceptions and stupid attempts at generalization. (One of my colleagues once said, provokingly, that Catholicism is mere "gewgaws", showy ornaments) Reading The Diary of a Country Priest (1936) by George Bernanos did help to expand my horizons a lot. It is a good book, even though it is not easy (by its being "difficult" I simply mean that it deals with difficult things, such as belief and doubt, the difficulty of honest prayer). I suspect that my reading of the book was shallow to some extent, but I think I will return to it in a few years time in order to see how I will read the book then.

Yesterday I watched a documentary about a monastery (of the Carthusian order) in the French Alps. The Grosse Stille (2005) by Philip Gröning. One of the great things about this film was its lenght. If the way of life of the monks is to be vividly described, it is essential that we gain a perspective on time as experienced by the monks. Monastery time. The daily routines: prayer, meals and work. Reading. The monks were allowed to speak only once a week and due to this fact the film was, naturally, a quiet affair. But I don't want to make a big deal out of this fact ( - see the post on musical quietism). But as there were little dialogue, all other small sounds were conspicious in a way that at least I am not very used to. Creaks, coughs. A saw. Even a chain saw. The film induces in the viewer a hightened awareness of small things, sounds, views. In some scenes, the camera focused on the faces of the monks, who stared quietly into the camera. These were beautiful scenes.

As a reviewer on IMDB also noted, there are some odd moments in the film which are, I think, all-important. The humorous procession of cows in the monastery hallway. A monk playing keyboard. A bottle of Evian. A strange mentioning at the end of the film of a monk who is leaving for Seoul. A man feeding cats and confronting unexpected difficulties with doing that (was one cat missing?). Monks playing in the snow. These scenes add a twist to the scenes portraying serenity and quiet routines. That this type of material was included in the film shows a particular openness from the point of view of Gröning to what life in a monastery is like. At least to me, the film did not strike me as his private indulgence in his own ideas about monasteries and religiosity but rather, the film showed that the director was prepared to let himself be surprised by the different dimensions of a religious life, the different things we may see as 'a religious life' (work as religiously significant, for example).

The only problem I did have with the film was the pictures filmed in some kind of 'hyper-real' slowmotion style. These short scenes brought in an aestheticism of a kind that striked a discordant note with the matter-of-fact tone that dominated most parts of the film.