Silent Light

If ever certain film-makers felt aggrieved on being accused of favouring style over substance, then this is the type of film that gave birth to such accusations. I actually enjoyed Carlos Reygadas' Battle In Heaven, much to my surprise. I felt it managed to balance style and substance reasonably well, and the arch stylistic elements did not blur the story of a man having a mid-life crisis complicated by his religion. Something worked in that film. Nothing worked in this film.



It is hard to care about a film that subjugates everything to the movement of a camera, to the extent that it resembles idolatory. An example: a doctor walks into a room and sits down with a man whose wife has just died. The doctor looks at the man, who is staring straight ahead, into space. The camera slowly tracks forward, to just past a two shot. It stops. The doctor sighs. "Your wife died of a heart attack" he says. THIS WOULD NOT HAPPEN! A doctor would not wait, the man would ask what happened, even if he was in shock, or in a daze, he would be stirred by the doctor's arrival! What should be a heartbreaking scene becomes ridiculous. You find yourself counting down the silence.



Another example: A man and a woman are driving in a car. They are man and wife, and have had some problems. He has had an affair, and has tried to stop it. He has found that hard. "I've seen her again" he says. The camera stays on him. He drives, his face emotionless. Cut to the wife. She looks ahead, to the road, not at her husband. She looks out the window. She looks at him. She turns away. She looks at him. "How long ago?" she asks. Again RIDICULOUS.

By two thirds of the way through the film, I just couldn't be bothered anymore. Yes it was beautiful to look at but you can look at photo essays for that. And thinking about it, you could probably find more about the Mennonite community in which the film was set through a photo essay than this. There was absolutely no reason to set this film, this story in this place. A man has an affair and finds it hard to make moral choices. Affairs are looked down on in the community. It could be set anywhere.



You don't care about anything in this film. Every scene is an exercise in alienation. Alienation of the viewer that is. Bit by bit, steadily but surely, you are broken down to the state of not giving a damn. You hope for an olive branch from Reygadas, something to draw you in, something to make you feel something, but it never comes. There is some sort of barrier between you and the film. In the cinema, you are intensely aware of the people around you, of your existence in a darkened room watching something on a screen. Great films make you forget that.

At university we were always told that film-making is about decision-making. We were right to be told about it. It is full of decision-making. You can't escape it, you can't make a film without it. It comes down to this: you need to know what you are doing and why you are doing it. I don't believe Reygadas knew either.