| Silent Light (Stellet Licht)
Carlos Reygados delivers a
series of tableaux establishing the setting for forbidden restrained
love in a rural Dutch-dialect-speaking Mennonite community in Mexico.
The film begins with an audacious, extended shot of the dawning day,
surely one of the most beautiful shots of the year. He brings an alusive mood
and style to what is essentially a simple story, and it simply throbs with the pain of infidelity.
The mennonites are a pacifist Protestant sect dating back to a 16th century Dutchman, Mennon Simons. Fleeing from
Holland to Canada and the US, anti-german feeling in the 1920 forced further migration to Mexico, where today
Mennonites number 100,000.
'Silent light provokes awe: not just for its sheer beauty, but for the astonishing leaps in seriousness and
maturity that Carlos Reygadas has made since his previous film
Battle in Heaven...opening and closing with majestic scenes of sunrise and sunset, Reygados's third feature
approaches grace. It also makes us believe in miracles.
- Melissa Anderson - Time Out New York
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