Documentary: Into Great Silence (2005)

From the website:

The Grande Chartreuse, the mother house of the legendary Carthusian Order, is based in the French Alps. “Into Great Silence” will be the first film ever about life inside the Grande Chartreuse.

Silence. Repitition. Rhythm. The film is an austere, next to silent meditation on monastic life in a very pure form. No music except the chants in the monastery, no interviews, no commentaries, no extra material.

Changing of time, seasons, and the ever repeated elements of the day, of the prayer. A film to become a monastery, rather than depict one. A film about awareness, absolute presence, and the life of men who devoted their lifetimes to god in the purest form. Contemplation.
An object in time.

- A beautiful and mostly silent film with moments of group prayer and Gregorian chanting. This film is free on YouTube in 7 parts:

I loved this film!

Hi Ona,

I loved this film so much...I'm watching it again today, on this rainy day in New Jersey.

How beautiful it is to watch these men live in community, and live life as a silent prayer.

I just saw the scene where an elderly monk is going to feed the cats, and how he's calling them and putting out a stuffed teddy bear for them. One of my favorite scenes. Lovely.

I recall the bit where they went out for a walk together, and it's one of the rare times they talk, and they had these little conversations, strolling in the countryside. And the part where they eat in silence, while one of them reads (I may remember it wrong, but I think one monk sat up on a little balcony reading outloud during the meal; and I recall being at a monastery for a retreat last year and they had a little balcony like that in the dining hall).

Hi Tina, thanks for the recommendation. This film has been on my Netflix queue for over a year - you've inspired me to finally watch it!

Another great movie which plays like a long meditation is a Korean film called Why Has Bodhi Dharma Left for the East?, well worth watching if it can be found.

Hi Mike, I hope you enjoy the movie!

I actually have Why Has Bodhi Dharma Left for the East? and I liked it, too.

Two other films in my collection are Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2004) and Amongst White Clouds (2007). I highly recommend both of these if you are into Buddhist oriented flicks.

There are more movies that I can add to this thread. I just have to dig around in my collection.

We just finished this tonight. Even our five year old daughter sat through most of it! This was beautiful; to be willing to live life being nothing... consciously. I'm not a Christian but I found myself agreeing with everything the blind monk was saying about God's will at the end. I liked the part where they got out to play in the snow - given the austerity of their lives, their weekly outings must take on a special significance. It inspires me. Thanks again for bringing this to our attention.

Rewatching this tonight. So sweet! It reminded me, last year when I did a weeklong silent retreat, I was surprised to discover how much I talk to myself (out loud). "Where is that book, oh there it is. What time is it?" or talking to inanimate objects: "Here, you stay there (to my notebook, as I set it next to my pillow)." That sort of thing. It was very funny.

Don't they do an extensive sung practice, in that movie? There's an interesting interplay between silence and very specific sound...

as if the opposite of silence isn't sound, but the randomness of noise...

It's on Netflix, if you have that.

Kate Gowen wrote: Don't they do an extensive sung practice, in that movie? There's an interesting interplay between silence and very specific sound...

as if the opposite of silence isn't sound, but the randomness of noise...

Yeah, that was very beautiful. That's the singing of the divine office that I'm trying to learn. I think they were doing it in French though, not Latin.

I was very touched by all the moments of kindness - like when the novices were being welcomed by each monk, kneeling in front of each and being lifted up, and there were a couple in particular who gave such huge heartfelt welcoming smiles to the newcomers. Or the medic-monk gently rubbing balm on the back of the very elderly monk. And the very cool welcoming ceremony for one of the novices in his cell, all lit with candles. After being around so much baroque Catholic art here, I was also fascinated by the austerity of their chapel and prayer areas, that they had a lot of simple icons and a bareness to their prayer spaces. Despite liking the ornament in general, my own prayer space has gotten much barer lately. I just use a folded cloth on the floor for my knees and a crucifix on a white wall, and have moved my collection of saints to an upper shelf, though I keep a few eastern-style icons and two small statues on my desk.

For myself the swing between wanting things very baroque and wanting them very austere is one that I always think I'm at an endpoint of and then it swings again. I remember when I first went to Burma and the foreigners' meditation hall was very plain, lots of light, a big gold statue of the Buddha and a painting at the end but that was it, whereas the Burmese meditation hall was dark and poky and had a massive altar completely overflowing with various photos, images, devotional objects, electric lights, etc, and the Buddha image had a swirling neon halo around his head. I loved it, and the curious thing to realise was that it wasn't at all in an ironic way. But then maybe I just wanted to be different from Western Protestant-influenced trends. Sometimes in Western Buddhism that dialectic interestingly manifests between Tibetan on the one hand and Zen/Theravada on the other too, though obviously that's a bit of an oversimplification...

That's really interesting. I went to a Chinese Buddhist temple once (in a Chinatown) and it was like a Catholic church, full of shrines and statues, people prostrating and lighting candles. The monks did a procession up the aisle, then sat up front and did the chanting and everyone else just stood and bowed and prostrated according to some guidelines I didn't know. Then the monks did a procession out and there was a luncheon in the basement.