Into Great Silence - A Film of the Carthusian Monks

I received an email today from Laura about a film that is of interest to Traditional Catholics. It is called Into Great Silence and you can watch the trailer here.

Several reviews are posted here, and the following is the review from Newsday.com

Those who hear music in the sound of falling snow, or see dance in the swing of church bell, will be transported by "Into Great Silence," a 162-minute exploration of the life of a monastery by German filmmaker Philip Gröning, who spent six months among the Carthusians of La Grande Chartreuse, in the French Alps.

Virtually a silent a film, it makes no attempt to explain, apologize for or psychoanalyze the members of what is one of the world's strictest religious orders.

Rather, it replicates the spiritual atmosphere of Chartreuse, getting viewers into the monastic mood through an ascetic system of carefully orchestrated, yet unobtrusive observations, of ritual, work and the occasional outdoor excursion. (These monks may lack soccer skills, but they do slide down a snowy hill on their backsides.)

"Into Great Silence" is one of those films -- Martin Scorsese's "Kundun" is another example -- wherein the spiritual aspiration of the filmmaker informs, and even exalts, the film itself.