Silent Light

Aroview: Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas (JAPON, BATTLE IN HEAVEN) helms his third feature with maturity and restraint, offering a striking, earthbound vision of a Mennonite family wrought by infidelity and sudden death.

Capable of stunning cinematography and sometimes-needless showmanship and provocation, this is something of a revelation for the talented director, whose film distils numerous, often wordless scenes of power and emotional weight into a wholly unique and unprecedented world, presided over by an ever-present mother nature. Particularly impressive is the film’s ability to transcend its formal similarities (to Bruno Dumont, Carl Dreyer’s ORDET) and religious core (not of God, but a higher, celestial calling). In Plautdietsch, the language of Russian Mennonites

NZ International Film Festival 2008

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