The Trailer for the Film Of The Year - Die Grosse Stille

January is a little early to be announcing these things, but it has become apparent that Philip Gröning's Die Grosse Stille (Into Great Silence) is a sublime achievement that will be difficult to top. Although it has been playing the festival circuit for the last couple of years, it has only just received UK distribution. A 3 hour largely dialogue-less portrait of a community of Carthusian monks in an Alpine setting, the film's delicacy and observational serenity turns the movie going experience transcendental, as the audience's participation in a 'vow of silence' and period of extended contemplation forms a solidarity with the monks on screen. Shot over four months, 16 years after Gröning originally submitted his proposal to the order, when the monks decided they were ready. Featuring some of the most beautiful use of video noise, within the edit, and some of the most pointedly joyous moments seen on screen in an age - senses are heightened watching this silence, so that on the rare occasions the monks are able to convene, the significance of their communication is all the more pronounced. And funny. The scene in which the monks are captured tumbling down a snowy hill in abandon, as a bemused hiker looks on, is one of the most euphoric things you will witness. And quite Herzog-ian.

“There’s no such thing as being out of your own time,” says Gröning. “This is why I moved away from language, because language is completely based on time: you have to remember the beginning of the phrase to get to the end of the phrase. It’s always cutting you off from that pure present.” From a review at cinema-scope.com.