MovieChat Forums > Die große Stille (2005) Discussion > Wasted potential.

Wasted potential.

posted 17 years ago by Capo-idFilm
27 replies | jump to latest

Like the monks themselves, Gröning goes about his business in a very humble, almost silent fashion, with no music, no voice-over, almost no interviews. It's an interesting premise because the subject matter is so unique, but it's a complete waste of an opportunity; to be frank, it is one of the most annoying, dumbfounding and frustrating documentaries made. In fact, it lacks the required insight to be classed as a documentary, and certainly isn't expressive enough to be a feature in its own right - it captures various activities without any insight as to why they go about what they do, why it is that these men have chosen a life of complete seclusion; it only serves to mystify these monks further, instead of de-mystifying them, so that anybody coming into the documentary not knowing who they are or what they do leaves the theatre having endured three hours of point-and-shoot filming of various religious rituals which aren't given any context at all. It defeats its own purpose: Gröning apparently waited close to two decades to get permission to film there, and the final product falls way short of revealing anything interesting about a potentially fascinating subject. The time-lapse shots, of the entire vicinity in the snowy mountains, are effective in their tranquility, but are completely undercut by inconsistent transitions (the film has no rhythm at all) and lazily assembled intertitles, quotations from the Bible. These quotations have some sort of obscure connection to the footage surrounding them, a bit like the Victorian quotations preceding each chapter in Fowles' "The French Lieutenant's Woman"; but while Fowles did immense research in assembling an eclectic, convincing range of quotes from all kinds of different sources, Gröning uses two or three and peppers them throughout his documentary as if to hammer the same point home time and time again, to the effect that, by the end of the film, you know what each intertitle says in French and German before the English subtitles come up translate it for us.

[–] 16 years ago

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[–] willywilly 16 years ago

There were 1000 ways this film could have gone, resulting in 999 complaints about where it didn't go. What it did for me well was convey the experience of being, in the way that these monks have chosen to be. I especially get a feeling for their experience of time.

The thing I'd have liked but didnt get was an understanding of how the community subsists, how it feeds clothes and houses itself, because they way it does this is inseparale from its spritual integrity. However I can find this out elsewhere I imagine, and its good the film posed the question to me.

[–] sixthromeo 16 years ago

One of the quotes shown and subtitled is this:
"Behold! I have become human, if you do not want to join me in beocming God, you do me wrong."
It haunts me, I am unsure of the source, but I see it as what the monks are doing.
That and the scene where they are, figuratively, talking their heads off about the washing of the hands with the few drops of water before their weekly communal meal. That it is about ritual, tradition, the things that keep something going in the way it has gone for so much time before.
I think, both the few quotes and the few words says almost all.
I didn't think about the Chartreuse liquor, never tried the stuff, so there was nothing getting in the way of "anticipation."
I don't even know how or why it is that I ordered the DVD from NetFlix.
Gerry

[–] 16 years ago

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[–] aorourke55 15 years ago

The movie was only about 165 minutes and not completely silent so I didn't find it hard to stay focused at all. The only way to get insight into the lives of the monks is to start training your mind to hold spiritual images or thoughts for prolonged periods.

As far as repeating the same few quotes, spiritual practice often requires contemplating the same object over and over. I thought the most interesting quote was "a man who will not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple." So unless all viewers went home and gave up all their meaningless distractions to live a purely virtuous life, obviously most people need to think about it for a long time before understanding the truth.

[–] bibi222 15 years ago

In my opinion some of you here are missing the point that Groening in fact DID tell a story by remaining silent and using the no interviews technique. Of course, the personal reasons why each monk has chosen this way of life remain unspoken, but through the unsaid and the silence the viewer gets a sense of what it feels like to be inside this monk way beyond anything this people could communicate in a verbal way.

I think this is what Groening was trying to say and I think he chose very wisely.

Of course, the viewer can only appreciate this by letting go of his knowledge about movies and how they are made and should have a plot and observe, the same way Groening did- in silence.

Fantastic film. Though I agree that some of the imagery, the "arty" shots as some of you called it weren´t necessary.

[–] Capo-idFilm 15 years ago

"Of course, the viewer can only appreciate this by letting go of his knowledge about movies and how they are made and should have a plot and observe, the same way Groening did- in silence"

It seems a very critic-proof, self-justifying and self-conscious way of approaching a film to me. Groening's observational style is very conscious; his camera set-ups are very aestheticised. And you wouldn't mind if there were any substance at its core, but sadly the film is all about the 'experience' - hence its pace, length and lack of substantial content. It's like the anti-intellectual attempt at imitating Frederick Wiseman.

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[–] SparkEyes 14 years ago

Astonishing how you reiterate so many points I just made an hour ago in a Netflix review of this movie. My main problem with this piece is that Gröning seems to think the images here speak for themselves with little to no input from him - they don't. Images have to be made to speak through creative decisions taken by the director, the editor etc. The film-maker has to do his job. It's possible Gröning deliberately took himself out of the process as an artistic move - if so, unfortunately he left us with a directionless (director-less) film. The little evidence of creative input - a thrown together hodge-podge of 8mm-type grainy footage (why?), detailed close-ups, full-screen captions and mug-shots - add nothing to the possibility of narrative and convey nothing but a sense of meaninglessness. I found the editing to be, yes "annoying, dumbfounding and frustrating". So many times an intriguing close-up detail was cut to black after just a few seconds. Or a scene with contemplative potential (e.g the wood-cutting) - again allowed to go nowhere - cut to black within seconds. Very jarring and very graceless. No overall narrative developed at all, really (And I've been exhaustingly moved by Gus Van Sant's "Gerry", so I'm no couch-potato!).
And, yes again - they waited 16 years.. to make this?
The most I can allow is that, maybe there is some deliberate attempt to draw attention to the film-making process, to break down idealistic or romanticised interpretations in the viewer (and from the director, I suppose). If so, it was at the expense of an enjoyable, or even sufferable, movie-watching experience.

[–] Capo-idFilm 14 years ago

Yeah, I'll stand by my original write-up of the film on the grounds that it is indeed such a promising - or at least interesting - premise; so too is the decision to shoot in natural lighting, even to give the whole thing a stately pace and imbue a 'sense of ritual', etc.

But the significance of the film essentially boils down to one's sensory experience of it. If you love the 'images in themselves', it seems, you can 'overlook' the sheer lack of contextual substance given to them.

(I'm quoting nobody in particular, just replying to the people here that seem to take objection to my original criticisms by trying to point out or predict that I've grown up on 'faster films' or 'escapist cinema' (I dunno what that means in all honesty, though I know it's used pejoratively), which isn't the case at all - I'm currently in the Jonathan Romney camp against 'Slow Cinema' as a growing fashion and political trend, but so too am I a champion of Béla Tarr...)

It's been a while since I saw this film, and I've not seen it since I wrote the original write-up. It seems it's more a video installation piece, with little understanding of narrative. Like I said previously in this thread, it's a kind of anti-substance(I originally wrote 'anti-intellectual') imitation of Frederick Wiseman, a filmmaker who truly does know narrative as powerful instrument, the power of juxtaposing one 'image in itself' against another 'image in itself', and the unavoidable meaning created by that juxtaposing. Because editing is just as important a part of film-making as is image-recording.

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[–] 14 years ago

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[–] Projectedlight 14 years ago

I haven't seen this film since 2007, but as I recall it, the editing was remarkable. I strongly disagree with the idea that Gronig was not contextualizing these images. There is more to this film than 'images in themself'; there is a remarkable sense of rhythm, evoking time's slow passage through a life spent in contemplation. Often images are juxtaposed or 'rhymed' with others that occur much later, as opposed to the immediately following shots. This is not a film about sudden epiphanies, but rather the deeper understanding we can only attain through meditation over a prolonged period of time.