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New Directions Summer Film Series...

Silent Light
(2007, 135 mins)
Director: Carlos Reygadas, Mexico

Sunday, June 28, 2009 – 3pm
Blanton Museum of Art
200 E. MLK Blvd.

Set in a Mennonite community in Mexico, Silent Light quickly establishes the importance of nature in setting the rhythms and routines of the religious, rural lives at the film's center. Its lauded opening shot chronicles a starry sky slowly giving way to breaking dawn as the cacophonous chatter of crickets chanting, dogs barking, and roosters crowing fills the soundtrack. From here on, birdsong is nearly constant, and images of land and sky frequently hold the camera's attention for extended durations. But amidst this pastoral setting, a disturbance is apparent from the outset. A cut from the heavenly curtain–raiser takes us into the home of Johan (Cornelio Wall Fehr) and Esther (Miriam Toews), where a circulating camera catches static portraits around the kitchen table and introduces us to the couple and their numerous children, the silence broken only by the unnerving tick–tock of a clock until an “Amen” frees the family to eat breakfast. In the somewhat stilted manner between husband and wife, not simply the result of the director's characteristic use of nonprofessional actors, festering emotions are legible.