Into Great Silence (Die große Stille)

 

Director Philip Gröning

INTO GREAT SILENCE  (Die große Stille)            B+                                                       France  Switzerland  Germany  (169 mi)  2005  d: Philip Gröning  

The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.
 —1 Kings 19:11-12

Filmed somewhat in the Wiseman mode without any narrative explanation until the end, using a single digital camera with different lenses ranging from crystal clear sharply defined, mostly outdoor images to grainy, softly smudged out of focus impressionistic images to experimental, altered time imagery, we learn that Gröning waited 13 years to get permission to film inside the Grande Chartreuse monastery, situated in the French Alps near Grenoble, where near silent monks of the Carthusian order, founded in 1084 by St. Bruno, continue to lead a rigorously ascetic existence.  Written, directed, shot and edited by Gröning, no history or background information is provided, instead we witness the arrival of new monks who are accepted into the order, where they are immediately immersed, as are we the viewers, into the steady rhythm of everyday life in the monastery.  Using only Biblical text as inner-titles, we follow the philosophical thread of the texts being practiced in the daily lives of the various monks, who read Biblical texts or carry out academic research, including the use of a computer, who spend much of the day on their knees in silent prayerful genuflection or singing Latin chants in unison as a group at Church services, or in silent contemplation as they take meals alone in their rooms, which consists of fruit, soup and a salad, which they eat in solitude as they stare out their windows, and on occasion they can be seen sweeping up, keeping their quarters clean. 

There are shots of each monk staring straight at the camera for a few moments, as over time, we learn to identify some of them, one of whom is blind, a man who gives us his explanation of Godliness, that the closer you are to God the happier you are, and the closer you come to death, the nearer you come to meeting God, “for God, there is no past, only the present.”  New monks seem to wear black and white robes with hoods, while the older wear only white.  One monk with a white beard is the only monk who spends a great deal of time outdoors and he wears a blue robe, which is caked with dirt most of the time, as he is constantly busying himself with hard work, taking care of the water supply from a well, shoveling snow in winter, planting and protecting the vegetable gardens, or performing various carpentry work.  The man simply loves the great outdoors despite being hunched over and walking with a limp, occasionally resorting to a cane.  Outdoors, the monks seem to converse freely, sometimes acting very child-like, such as a beautiful moment when they take a walk through the mountains in the snow before cavorting down the steep inclines like a toboggan slide, using their feet as skis, trying to maintain their balance, sometimes trying to knock their fellow monks over as they both fall into the snow, but other times they all gather together outside as a group picking each others brains, attempting to unlock the mysteries of life and faith, filled with a healthy curiosity that abounds, each moving towards a possible state of grace.  The camera continues to find natural settings which by themselves account for a contemplative mood, such as snow falling, trees in the wind or moving clouds, ice melting, the immense mountainous expanse or shifting stars in the sky. 

But overall, this is a long, drawn out, wordless cinematic essay on solitary religious expression, where the camera walks the halls as just another member of the order, becoming a silent participant, where we see the monks give each other hair cuts using old-fashioned electric clippers that jam occasionally, but each member gets their head sheared to near bald, or one monk lovingly cares for a group of friendly cats, where most are quite shy about revealing themselves, but mostly we see the monks routinely return to the Church in both candle-lit darkness and the natural lightness of day to chant and pray and hold mass, led by one of their own, a service initiated by the ringing of church bells.  What we don’t see are baths or showers or shaving rituals, not even the presence of a doctor, also there are no images of death or funeral ceremonies.  No cemetery grounds are ever seen or visited.  Instead this is a near dialogue-free journey into one of the farthest corners of the earth, a hermetic existence rarely opened up to the world until this film.  One could be disappointed by the repeated interruptions of the Biblical inner-titles translated into French, German, and English, as if the filmmaker was providing texts that the monks themselves were constantly referring to.  Many might have preferred no interruptions, which would have felt more like an experimental, free form expression, but this would also have provided a more spititual and mysterious aspect to the film, which is, after all, about the search for meaning in life.  One particular hallway is frequented in the film, with numerous archways above it, as if each is a stepping stone, and like the pathway of life, one must learn to traverse the entire hallway before it opens up into a great expanse at the end, perhaps a metaphor for that eternal state of grace.  

Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d'une chute)

 

Director Justine Triet

Triet accepting the Palme d'Or at Cannes

Triet with her cast at Cannes

Triet with actress Sandra Hüller

ANATOMY OF A FALL (Anatomie d'une chute)               B+                                                       France  (152 mi)  2023  d: Justine Triet

Sometimes a couple is kind of a chaos.           —Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller)

Courtroom dramas are their own entity, where it’s hard to sustain the tension throughout, though several films that come to mind are Carl Theodor Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928), Sidney Lumet’s 12 ANGRY MEN (1957), Billy Wilder’s WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (1957), Otto Preminger’s ANATOMY OF A MURDER (1959), which this title references, Robert Bresson’s The Trial of Joan of Arc (Procès de Jeanne d'Arc) (1961), Robert Mulligan’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), and more recently Alice Diop’s Saint Omer (2022).  When a husband is found dead after a fall from a third story window, the French court charges the wife with murder, though the crime of passion is purely based on speculation, having no evidence actually tying her into a crime.  What’s perhaps most surprising about this film is it never answers the central question, where the entire film is something of a distracting Hitchcock MacGuffin, offering extraneous theories and clues that are besides the point, but there is a website set up at didshedoit.com (ANATOMY OF A FALL), which is uniquely shown onscreen before the story even begins asking viewers to vote on that very question.  Clearly no definitive answer is ever given.  Apparently actress Sandra Hüller, playing the wife, was unsure as well during the filming, according to a Q&A during the New York Film Festival, repeatedly asking the director if she was guilty, but no answer was forthcoming.  So instead of innocence or guilt, what dominates the film is the intelligence of the storytelling, subtly weaving together various strands of possibilities, becoming more of a character study revealing underlying motives, moving back in time for one powerful flashback sequence, with the camera strategically zooming in during key revelations, where the courtroom dissection of a marriage becomes a commentary on how news is disseminated through social media outlets, routinely delving into private lives, where lies become facts after repeated airings, with viewers unable to distinguish between the haze of prejudice and emotions that intentionally cloud our judgment, ultimately becoming an exposé on the fallibility of perception, where who and what’s to be believed remains an open question, even in a courtroom.  The French courtroom is nothing like what we see in America, where lawyers run the show with legal objections, as it’s more conversational, where the accused is allowed to speak directly to the judge, prosecutor, and stream of witnesses, feeling more like a democratic process.  The film won the coveted Palme d’Or 1st Place prize at the Cannes Film Festival, where Justine Triet is the third female director to win the prize, though to be honest, the festival has had more than a decade of controversial choices, many of which are highly questionable, in particular the last two years, where the distinction of such a prestigious award doesn’t often translate to box office success, as the theater was nearly empty when recently seen, yet in France it had the best opening of any Palme d’Or film since Laurent Cantet’s The Class (Entre Les Murs) (2008).  This is the kind of film where you may wonder what all the fuss is about, but the set-up is unusual, to say the least, as it’s a French court with a German suspect who speaks English, where it meanders for an inordinately long time in ludicrous speculation, as the police investigation offers no clear picture, so the courtroom drama is a whirlwind of theatrical suppositions, all intended to sway public opinion, yet what it actually reveals is how difficult it is to get at the philosophical question of what is truth.  For instance, the prosecution spends plenty of time on an argument the married couple had the day prior to the death, which gets into heated emotions, none of which shed any light on any potential murder, but does get inside the head of the characters, where it must be said that far less than 1% of these kinds of escalated marital tensions actually lead to murder, so how much weight can anyone give to such an operatic theory, yet it becomes a central thread of a courtroom drama that delves into excruciatingly uncomfortable personal moments that could just as easily have been called Anatomy of a Marriage.  It’s unlikely anyone will be swayed by these courtroom arguments, which may actually be the point, becoming a metaphor for all the biased rhetoric that fills the airwaves, mirroring the media frenzy that surrounds the case, where at some point you just want to shut it off, as it can get pretty disgusting, creating visceral anger when even the most reputable news outlets resort to this kind of subterfuge.   

The setting is an isolated mountain chalet in the Grenoble region of the French Alps heavily submerged in snow, as we see successful German author Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) being interviewed at home by graduate student Zoé (Camille Rutherford), yet despite the relaxed conversation, it is disrupted and eventually stopped by the unusually loud music coming from the upstairs loft where the unseen husband Samuel is busily working on repairs, yet this wildly exotic Caribbean steel drum music playing on a loop cranked up to high volume becomes a dominant theme of the film, a 2008 remix, which is an instrumental cover of rapper 50 Cent’s 2003 hit Bacao Rhythm & Steel Band - PIMP - YouTube (3:14), which couldn’t be more out of place in the snow covered Alpine region, yet literally swirls around in your head for days afterwards.  While it’s not immediately evident, Sandra has a blind son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner), who goes out on a sunny mountain walk with his guide dog Snoop (who figures prominently in this movie), yet when they return they discover the dead body lying in the snow, which sets the story in motion.  An autopsy reveals his head wound was inflicted before his body hit the ground, putting Sandra under suspicion, as we see her conferring with her attorney Vincent Renzi (Swann Arlaud) before any charges are filed, with thoughts of arguing it was a self-inflicted suicide, as that is their best courtroom defense.  Because her son is blind, there’s not really a witness that can shed light on what led up to this event, other than what he heard, so police call in experts to summarize their best case scenarios.  This is a film that the less you know ahead of time works to its advantage, as the film is chalk full of revelations that are completely surprising and in some cases utterly transfixing, becoming more of a puzzle piece, with a lot of missing pieces.  To start with, let’s mention the way the director utilizes the camera, shot mostly in a cinéma vérité aesthetic by Simon Beaufils, especially in the beginning when they’re investigating the crime scene, as the characters seem intrinsically linked together by the framing and staging, offering little hints and clues that leave viewers questioning the findings.  Yet most importantly, this is a disturbing yet compelling study that values character over plot, where it’s that personalized viewpoint that makes this film so resonant, with powerful performances that are off the charts.  We’ve seen Sandra Hüller before in Thomas Stuber’s German film In the Aisles (In den Gängen) (2018), but most especially in Marin Ade’s hilariously unorthodox and thoroughly confounding 2017 Top Ten List #2 Toni Erdmann (2016), also appearing in Triet’s earlier film Sibyl (2019) and Jonathan Glazer’s THE ZONE OF INTEREST (2023), where she exudes strength and vulnerability, yet it’s her intelligence and literary sense of self-awareness that elevates this into something more than it appears, yet there’s also an inescapable feeling that we can never fully trust her.  By allowing us to get a glimpse of her history, we realize just how complex a person she is, and that aspect alone really makes this film shine.  It’s a captivating mystery where you never really know what’s going to happen next, as a lengthy introductory sequence familiarizes us with the situation, and it comes as no surprise that she’s charged with a murder, but it’s the courtroom scenes that lure viewers into the heart of the matter.  While there’s legal banter that goes back and forth, as each side attempts to undercut the other side’s credibility, it gets decidedly different when the flamboyant prosecution resorts to a personalized smear campaign targeting the accused, which seems morally unethical, particularly when there is no criminal evidence associated with this line of attack, so this character assassination takes us into unprecedented territory for courtroom dramas.  Triet introduces a role reversal, as women have always been at home, while men have been free to explore the world through their careers and share ideas with others.  Women simply didn’t have that time, as they were too busy taking care of domestic tasks.  To find a female character who writes books, who is in the position to take the time to write, means that it’s the man who sacrifices in order to meet her needs, and he’s none too happy about it.  The prosecutor drives this point home, becoming a focal point of male resentment, which leads him into outlandish accusations suggesting it’s all her fault, contending she drove him to his death, but Sandra is having none of it.  Ironically, in death, Samuel finally gets the attention he never received during his lifetime.  

While some believe there are pacing issues, that the film drags in places due to its length, yet what happens in that courtroom is riveting, where the intensity level leaves no avenue of escape, as you’re stuck there, literally at the mercy of the filmmaker, where a relentless assault takes place before our eyes, which is not just distasteful, especially when the sexist prosecutor, Antoine Reinartz from Robin Campillo’s 2017 Top Ten List #8 BPM (Beats Per Minute (120 battements par minute), mocks the accused for suggesting any scenario other than his own, which, of course, is pure conjecture, so there’s this morally superior, omniscient voice of God offering judgement and condemnation, joined by well-rehearsed witness testimony to support his contention, with the accused a bit beffudled by it all, as it makes little sense to her, Anatomy Of A Fall - Justine TRIET Clip [Cannes] YouTube (57 seconds).  Viewers may feel the same way until a pivotal scene alters our perception, not only about what’s taking place in the courtroom but about the film as well, as there’s an extended flashback argument between the husband and wife that is wrought with tension, as both are writers, so the creative process is cleverly introduced into the film through a contentious relationship, where creative frustration, artistic ambition, and jealousy have a way of tearing them apart, feeling like something out of Bergman’s exhaustingly detailed television drama Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap) (1973), which sheds light on a decades worth of emotional upheavals that are shown in excruciating detail.  This film takes an unsettling psychological journey into the depths of Samuel (Samuel Theis) and Sandra’s conflicted relationship, as she reveals secrets about her past life and her turbulent relationship with her husband, where sexual and artistic insecurity play a large part, planting obstacles as an excuse for failure, which are only magnified in this trial and put in the spotlight, as Sandra exhibits both a sense of inner calm, while also going full throttle in moments of explosive rage.  She is right, however, that none of these singular moments alone define a person, as an entire life and marriage constitute a string of moments, where the sum of the parts provide a more accurate portrait.  Nonetheless, the prosecutor bases much of his argument on the underlying motivation behind Sandra’s written works, singling out specific texts where a character despises her weak husband and fantasizes about killing him, suggesting it draws from her own life and amounts to an autobiographical confession, though she exclusively writes works of fiction.  This exact same thing happens in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s LA VÉRITÉ (1960), as she is being judged not on the evidence but on her morality, for which she remains thoroughly unapologetic, as she is attacked for being promiscuous and bisexual, something that would be unthinkable for male writers, exposing inherently misogynistic prejudices in the legal system.  The extensive time in the claustrophobic courtroom allows viewers to get the full impact of this extraordinary scene, where the range of emotion continually escalates while the marital arguments and counterarguments resemble that of the trial.  Daniel sits through this courtroom drama and is exposed to these same revelations that the audience hears, but this is his family, so hearing some of the ugly secrets for the very first time has a strange effect on him, and his unexpected response says so much about this film, as he has perhaps the most superlative moment in the film, which evokes a dramatic silence of profound implications, yet he’s just an 11-year old kid, played with admirable fragility, where his witness testimony sends shivers through the spine for its utter clarity and innocence of spirit.  He’s at the heart of the film as well, becoming associated with a familiar Spanish theme that he furiously plays on the piano, Leyenda by Albeniz in HD - Andres Segovia YouTube (7:00), but is sidelined for a good part of it as a passive spectator, where the crux of the film may be seen through his eyes, so when he speaks up the results are staggering.  Written by the director with her partner Arthur Harari, having two children together, while also sharing writing credits on her previous film Sibyl (2019), Triet is a member of the French gender equality group Collectif 50/50, which also includes Jacques Audiard, Bertrand Bonello, Alice Diop, Céline Sciamma, Léa Seydoux, and Rebecca Zlotowski, and in her controversial awards speech at Cannes, she criticized French President Emmanuel Macron’s highly unpopular change to the country’s retirement age and his suppression of the mass protests from the pension reform protest movement, as France has one of the lowest retirement ages of any industrialized country, while also having one of the lowest pension rates of any European country.  Perhaps because of this, Triet’s film was passed over as the French selection for Best International Film, instead choosing Vietnamese-born director Tran Anh Hung’s culinary romance THE TASTE OF THINGS starring French favorites Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel.