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Product Description:
Nestled deep in the postcard-perfect French Alps, the Grande Chartreuse is considered one of the world s most ascetic monasteries. In 1984, German filmmaker Philip Gröning wrote to the Carthusian order for permission to make a documentary about them. They said they would get back to him. Sixteen years later, they were ready. Gröning, sans crew or artificial lighting, lived in the monks quarters for six months filming their daily prayers, tasks, rituals and rare outdoor excursions. This transcendent, closely observed film seeks to embody a monastery, rather than simply depict one it has no score, no voiceover and no archival footage. What remains is stunningly elemental: time, space and light. One of the most mesmerizing and poetic chronicles of spirituality ever created, INTO GREAT SILENCE dissolves the border between screen and audience with a total immersion into the hush of monastic life. More meditation than documentary, it s a rare, transformative experience for all.
DISC ONE, THE FILM:
Breathtaking 16:9 anamorphic transfer, created from Hi-Def elements
U.S. theatrical trailer
Optional English subtitles
DISC TWO, THE EXTRAS:
The Making of Into Great Silence : With behind-the-scenes footage,
location photos and handwritten notes from the monks
Additional scenes, including a segment on the preparation of the
Carthusian s world-famous Chartreuse liqueur
Night Mass
The Carthusian Order : An informative guide to the rules, architecture, and
daily schedules of the monks and the monasteries
Extensive photo, poster, and press kit galleries
And more!
Buy Into Great Silence (Two-Disc Set) Free Shipping. Save up to 60% Find Into Great Silence (Two-Disc Set) Prices at $24.99 Free Shipping New! Latest styles for the Season.
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Average Rating : 
Rating :  - Entering Natural Time
The beauty of this film, documenting the rudimentary life of remote French Carthusian monks, is that it actually - for its duration -- stops time. At first, be warned, this can be at least a little irritating. The film makers dial their modern audience down to heartbeat level, to help them "enter the great silence" that these hardy ascetics live. No matter one's affinity for either the simple life or one's familiarity with monasticism, the pace of the modern world and the clock still lives in all of us. Confronting the world depicted here can be jarring, even deeply unsettling -- and quite apart from one's religious faith or sympathy with monasticism.
Fact is, I have had virtually yearly contact with monasteries since age 14, and am now 57. And I have on occasion lived with desert monks and in silent Trappist houses, for weeks. Yet I freely admit -- indeed I think it needs emphasis -- that the first hour of the film was difficult for me, as it doubtless is for many others. For I have a busy career in the modern world, you see . . . in a practical sense, I have the same impatient surface we all have. I was from the first transfixed by the lovely photography and the locale, of course, including the ambiance of the monks and this heartbreakingly lovely world of theirs, but I did not like the film's pace and rebelled against what I thought was cinematic trickery, forcing the issue on the audience by long takes, absolute silence, the most rudimentary of human tasks and activites. Ingmar Bergman did a couple films about his home island, and I suppose it reminded me of that -- but Bergman had a sense of humor and always winked at you from his city world at his country world -- frankly making his films delightful in a way that this film, decidedly, is not. One will read a lot of sincere ecstasy about this film here, and -- in short -- you may just not get it. But the point is, don't be disappointed -- as against the grain as it is, let the film makers use force, if that is what it is, to take you further down the road.
By the end, I confess I now see that the film makers had no other way. As I should have known from my own long experience with monks, the hard edge of our modern shell simply needs be broken, like an egg; there is no other way about it. But my experience with monks goes back so far this breakage is apparently second nature. And then too, I first experienced it as a youth, when you are more open. So the film revealed to me that the utter radicalness of monastic life had never really hit me as an adult, until walking into this movie after a busy day at the office. When going into monasteries for years, I suppose, I had conditioned myself beforehand and decompressed first. This movie was more like a hard, straight dive into the cold. For that extraordinary shock and for teaching a 57 year old dog new tricks, I am very grateful to these film makers. They did the virtually impossible -- restoring the experience of natural time, without clocks, with a work of art, making it palbable and fully real.
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