Silent Light (2007) YIFY - Download Movie TORRENT

The six-minute opening shot of Silent Light depicts the starry night sky giving way, slowly but relentlessly, to the nascent light of the early morning sun. This shot could in itself serve as a captivating short film but in its particular context it serves most obviously to set the overall pace for this film by the Mexican director Carlos Reygadas: slow.The cast of Silent Light consists primarily of non-actors drawn from the Menonite religious community in which the film is set. Their fine performances create a believable and frequently captivating world for the viewer. We are given insights into the day-to-day lives of the family as the story slowly develops in stages, grimly charting the inexorable demise of the relationship between husband Johan and wife Esther.Around the stark central narrative there are some charming scenes and some superb camera work. Even the scenes where the children playing in the pond are all-too-aware of the presence of the camera carry a certain fascination. Having said that there are too many shots where the camera lingers to seemingly little effect, except to make the viewer feel distinctly uncomfortable (as one other reviewer has pointed out, there is something rather unnerving about the kissing scene involving Johan and Marianne).I also feel compelled to add that there is a rather bizarre twist at the end of what would otherwise be a straightforward and powerful story. For me this threw into some confusion the preceding two hours of film and left the story hanging on an oddly unsatisfactory note. Despite the slow pacing and somewhat bewildering ending this is a strong, distinctive piece of film-making and I would recommend that it be viewed in a cinema rather than on the small screen so as to get the best of some superb camera-work.

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Robert_Woodward 7 / 10

Slow and slightly bewildering, but visually superb.

Reviewed by paul2001sw-1 7 / 10

Static and silence

A film about a snow-covered area of Mexico inhabited by emotionally reticent German-speakers promises some surprises; and we get our first when the film begins with ten whole minutes without a single word of dialogue or any discernible action, before the first line (a simple "Amen") is uttered. With the opening sequences out the way, thing start to happens, but at a slow pace, and with many long scenes filmed with static cameras that reminded me of Terrence Davies' Liverpool trilogy, although those films were nowhere near as still as this one. At its worst, the result could be dismissed as a long film about agriculture; but at is best, the slow pace pays dividends, as the audience learns how to react to the minutiae of the characters' lives. For example, there's one scene, where we wait for a truck to reverse, that takes about 10 seconds, but in taking these ten seconds (which would have been cut in almost any other film), the poignancy of the moment is captured in a way would have been lost if the blank space had been edited out. But I didn't completely understand the ambiguous ending and during the final (again silent) five minutes, I regrew my impatience with the film. There's some brilliance on display here, but also some self-indulgence, albeit in highly understated form. But it's worth watching in either case, as an unsentimental but emotionally moving portrait of a community not many people elsewhere in the world know too much about.

Silent Light

2007 [GERMAN]

Action / Drama / Romance

Silent Light

2007 [GERMAN]

Action / Drama / Romance

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Movie Reviews

Slow and slightly bewildering, but visually superb.

Static and silence

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