Silent Light

CLOSING FILM! ►  The Closing Night film of our Mexican retrospective is one of the most astonishing recent achievements in world cinema, and is also being showcased in Pacific Cinémathèque’s “Best of Decade” program this month. Silent Light, the third feature from Carlos Reygadas (Japón, Battle in Heaven), is a rigorous, powerful, profoundly beautiful drama of faith and redemption that consciously evokes the metaphysical cinema of Bresson or Dreyer. (The film’s breathtaking conclusion is a direct nod to Dreyer’s 1954 masterpiece Ordet). Silent Light is set within an austere Mennonite community in northern Mexican and played by a non-professional cast; most of the dialogue is in a Low German dialect known as Plautdietsch. The protagonist is Johan, a devout, stalwart man married to a fine wife — but helplessly drawn, by the power of love, to another woman. Canadian novelist Miriam Toews — said to have been cast by Reygadas after he saw her author’s photo on a book jacket — makes her screen debut as Johan’s wife. “At its very best, it has the richness of Malick or the transcendental simplicity of Ozu. A deeply considered, formally accomplished, beautiful-looking and unexpectedly gripping film from a director making a giant leap into the first rank of world cinema” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian).Colour, 35mm, in Plautdietsch, German and Spanish with English subtitles. 142 mins.

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Silent Light has additional screenings on February 24, 26 & 27 in Best of the Decade.