Johan is a deeply religious man who lives with his wife and children in the Mexican Mennonite community. Against his better judgement, and the tenets of his beliefs, Johan has fallen deeply in love with another woman Marianne. This love threatens not only his home life, but also his immortal soul...

Silent Light (2007, 2 hrs 10 min 45 sec) is another great film by the Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas  (Battle in Heaven). The film won a prodigious number of awards with twenty-one wins and one nomination, including the Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

As a cinematic experience Light is a languid affair. From the real time shot of the sun coming up over the rural community, the film is as measured and slow as real life. For some this will be an impressive rendition of the tone and tempo of rural life, for others it will feel like watching paint dry. Personally the breath and beauty of the film impressed me in parts. The silences and pauses in the film are deliberate, almost contemplative. The pace of life in the Mennonite community is never rushed. The fact that as farmers they are reliant on the season, measures their lives out in greater spans than city dwelling folk. This has the effect of drawing into sharp focus the turmoil in Johan’s (Cornelio Wall) mind as he confesses to his best friend and his wife about the affair.

Johan’s wife, Esther (Miriam Towes) although hurt appears stoic about the affair with Marianne (Maria Pankratz). His best friend, Zacarias (Jacobo Klassen) takes the measured view that perhaps it is his destiny to be in love with both women, though Johan’s father - understandably, given that he is a preacher - thinks that this is the work of the Devil.

That’s pretty much all that happens as far as the plot is concerned. This is book-ended with a long shot of a sunrise at the beginning of the film and a sunset at its closure. Ultimately, the film is hard to pigeonhole. Parts of it feel profound, with much to say about spirituality and the human condition, yet still there are other moments when you feel that the film has slipped from artistic endeavour to self indulgence. This is a movie you will either love or hate.

One of the film's weaknesses is the cast. Drawn from the Mennonite community they have had no previous acting experience. This is a very hit and miss affair and always has been since the Neo-realists decided that to reflect reality you had to use real people. That isn’t to say all the performances are dire or that there are not genuine moments of genius from the cast.

The DVD comes with a nice set of audio options, which, given that this is such a quiet piece are mostly academic, though you do have the option of stereo, 5.1 and DTS. The film is for the most part in Pladtdietsch, a dialect only spoken in the Mennonite community, with a smattering of Spanish here and there. The print is an acceptable anamorphic presentation.

The movie comes with a pretty good set of extras. First up you get a Behind the Scenes featurette (35 min 52 sec) which tells you little of note about the making of the film Rather it is a lot of the footage of the film being made and presented in such a way as to make the audience a voyeur of the process. Next up are some deleted scenes (6 min 50 sec) and a rather odd interview (7 min 28 sec) which is not as you might expect with Carlos Reygadas, but with Cornelio Wall who discusses his life as a farmer and radio DJ.

8

Charles Packer