Die Grosse Stille

I saw a beautiful film last night at Hartford's Real Artways Cinema: Die Grosse Stille - Into Great Silence. It's a documentary of daily life in the Grand Chartreuse, the Alpine mother house of the Carthusians, one of the most ascetic monastic orders in the West. The film is a little under three hours, but it rarely seemed long or overdrawn. All of the little particularities in the life of an ordered, ancient community are brought out, and one gets the sense of looking into a very rich, private world. The stille in the title refers to the life of the monks, but also to the film itself - there is very little dialogue and no voice-over to explain the images and utter platitudes (one of the few exceptions to this is an amusing scene where the monks talk shop during a recreation period: "Did you know that the monastery in Pavia uses seven washbasins instead of only one?" "Well, they're Trappists!"). The film felt like a visual cleansing of the palate, leaving me more refreshed than when I went in.