Johan matter-of-factly confesses to his father that he loves a woman who is not his wife. The elder farmer asks him to take a walk, and we move along with them from the dark interior of the barn to the blazing white light of a winter day. Look at the pastures, is the father’s advice, and so we look, soundless and barren and cold. Small talk, the laconic attempt at advice, a quiet wrestling with the immensity of the confession that takes them into the house: these are pious folk, Mennonite farmers, but unlike past depictions they are a people sensitive to the plight of the individual. Here people think deeply about the consequences of feelings and there is a real concern for lived ethics. Johan is drawn to the new woman, Marianne, a person who stirs something long dormant in him but the thought of confronting the imponderable bottom to his love for his wife, Esther, is something he cannot bear. When his father solemnly speaks it is as if drawn from of a lifetime assessment: ‘I would never wish to be in your position… and then again, I would’. In a single line of dialogue the crux of Johan’s dilemma is conveyed: love is a paradox we endure.
‘Silent Light’, Carlos Reygadas’ sober opus to the complexity of love is in a word, Glorious. In slow-churning visuals of modest country life the film entreats us to a thought-provoking piece of voyeurism into the private lives of a man, a wife and his lover. This immediate narrative is nestled within a larger cosmic one that evokes the mystical interconnectedness of life, all things enveloped by the eponymous silent light. In every shot light behaves with a knowing purpose as if cognizant of the drama it encloses. Its physicality is hard to overlook, often stark and flaring, it bleeds into the actors on all sides. The drama is forever punctured by this cosmic subtext: the film begins and ends with the rise and fall of the sun, and in the long still passages of landscape the spiritual is assumed, a chorus known to the audience yet hidden from the tragic figures onstage. Everywhere there is reverence but the characters observe none.
This is a masterfully portrayed world of contrasts, light and dark, beginnings and ends, life and death. Likewise, the bucolic calm and pious civility of the Mennonite community give sharp contrast to the inner turmoil of Johan’s longing, a transgression embellished not through any overt condemnation by the community (as is so often the case in these stories) but rather by the viable alternative they represent. Johan’s dilemma is one born of the ambiguity of love, not the oppression of one kind for another; very early on we learn that his wife Esther knows of the betrayal, and endures for the years it goes on, and in fact there are very few people in the community who Johan has not confessed his dilemma to. Unsolicited feelings and the self-betrayal this poses becomes the impinging threat to Johan’s, Esther’s and Marianne’s aspirations for peace, and this is what great tragedy is made of.
In conscious imitation of Robert Bresson’s technique, Reygadas choose to cast non-actors in the principle roles, thus indirectly drawing attention to the artifice. His intent was to allow the innate qualities of the individuals inform the characters and as it were inhabit them with a natural effortlessness. Inevitably this resulted in a slight disconnect between the emotions and the delivery, between the expected verisimilitude and the overt artifice this sometimes affords. For the most part this was not a problem and part of the appeal comes from the tacit dimension of watching real people deliver lines; but the time spent admiring the artifice made the experience more contemplative then visceral, and unusual for the subject matter. Despite the lack of action and emotional catharsis onscreen I found myself totally engrossed, mesmerized by the daunting subtext, which at times drew from biblical references, the Edenic myth and the Prodigal Son parable most notably.
The final act takes a surprising turn (to say the least), so much so an audience member during the Q&A;accused the director of succumbing to a deus ex machina to resolve his story. It is jarring, no doubt, and it will make or break the film depending on your reaction to it. For me, it was icing on the cake, bringing the spiritual component even closer into the fold of the drama, a consummation that was inching its way forward in every frame.
