The beautifully minimalist SILENT LIGHT returns to Lincoln Center as part of fiftieth anniversary of the New York Film Festival
SILENT LIGHT (STELLET LICHT) (Carlos Reygadas, 2007)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Monday, September 3, 8:00
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
Carlos Reygadas’s Silent Light is a gentle, deeply felt, gorgeously shot work of intense calm and beauty. The film opens with a stunning sunrise and ends with a glorious sunset; in between is scene after scene of sublime beauty and simplicity, as Reygadas uses natural sound and light, a cast of mostly nonprofessional actors, and no incidental music to tell his story, allowing it to proceed naturally. In a Mennonite farming community in northern Mexico where Plautdietsch is the primary language, Johan (Cornelio Wall Fehr) is torn between his wife, Esther (Miriam Toews), and his lover, Marianne (Maria Pankratz). While he loves Esther, he finds a physical and spiritual bond with Marianne that he does not feel with his wife and their large extended family. Although it pains Johan deeply to betray Esther, he is unable to decide between the two women, even after tragedy strikes. Every single shot of the spare, unusual film, which tied for the Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival (with Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis), is meticulously composed by Reygadas (Japon, Battle in Heaven) and cinematographer Alexis Zabe, as if a painting. Many of the scenes consist of long takes with little or no camera movement and sparse dialogue, evoking the work of Japanese minimalist master Yasujiro Ozu. The lack of music evokes the silence of the title, but the quiet, filled with space and meaning, is never empty. And the three leads — Fehr, who lives in Mexico; Toews, who is from Canada; and Pankratz, who was born in Kazakhstan and lives in Germany — are uniformly excellent in their very first film roles. Silent Light is a mesmerizing, memorable, and very different kind of cinematic experience. Silent Light, which was shown at the 2007 New York Film Festival, is screening at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the ongoing series “50 Years of the New York Film Festival,” which continues with such NYFF vets as Jafar Panahi’s Offside, Abdellatif Kechich’s Black Venus, and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. Individual tickets for the fiftieth anniversary of the New York Film Festival, which runs September 28 through October 14, go on sale to the general public on September 9.
Referring to the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, Samsara is a visually stunning journey around the world, but one that will leave viewers wanting more. Director Ron Fricke and producer Mark Magidson, who previously teamed up on 1985’s Chronos and 1992’s Baraka, traveled to twenty-five countries on five continents over the course of four years, photographing famous landmarks, ancient and modern landscapes, old and new architecture, mountains, parks, oceans, cities, and many of the myriad peoples who populate the planet. Featuring an at-times overbearing score by Michael Stearns, Lisa Gerrard, and Marcello de Francisci and no narration or titles whatsoever to show what’s on the screen, Samsara can be breathtaking as well as confusing as the images roll by, shot in 70mm and projected digitally at 4K. Threads of narrative weave their way into the film, including sections on religion, war, poverty, and food production, exploring the Buddhist ideas of interconnection and impermanence, although the unfolding “story” appears most often to be somewhat random. And oddly, individuals regularly stare directly into the camera for uncomfortable periods of time, as if accusing the viewer of something that is not necessarily clear. Fricke and Magidson, who both edited the film, take the audience to such locations as Epupa Falls in Angola, Paraisopolis Favela in São Paulo, Mariesminde Poultry Farm in Denmark, Château de Versailles in France, Kanikwei Coffin Shop in Ghana, Thiksey Monastery in India, Kawah Ijen Sulfur Mine in Indonesia, Teatro Alla Scala in Italy, the Tsuchiya Shokai Doll Factory in Japan, Petra in Jordan, cliff dwellings in Mali, Mingun Temple in Myanmar, Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Cebu Provincial Detention Center in the Philippines, the demilitarized zone in South Korea, Cascade Go-Go Bar in Thailand, Cappadocia in Turkey, Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai, the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii, the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, and Aadlen Bros. Auto Wrecking in Sun Valley, among so many other fascinating sites that reveal a wide expanse of what is going on in the world. Prisoners dance, cars whirr down elevated highways, chickens get slaughtered, tribes from Ethiopia and Namibia live off the land, poor children pick through garbage, a man stands next to his robot double, and a group of Buddhist monks make an exquisite sand painting. Yet as fascinating as Samsara can be, it still feels somewhat lacking, as if it could have been better in IMAX 3D (even if that wasn’t a logistical possibility), and the scarcity of detail supplied about the places visited is frustrating in today’s info-rich society.
In September 1983, innovative saxophonist and Fort Worth, Texas, native Ornette Coleman received a key to the city of his hometown and then helped open the new Caravan of Dreams arts center by performing the world premiere of “Skies of America,” a specially commissioned work that teamed Coleman and his band, Prime Time, with the Forth Worth Symphony. Director Shirley Clarke uses this celebratory event as the central focus of her 1985 documentary, Ornette: Made in America, which is being rereleased in a beautiful new 35mm restoration overseen by Milestone Films as part of its continuing Project Shirley, which began earlier this year with a dazzling new print of Clarke’s 1962 film about jazz and drugs, 