Filmed in one of the most ascetic hermitages in the world, the Grand Chartreuse monastery located in the French Alps, Into Great Silence enters and documents a world so different from our hyperkinetic, tech-driven, stimulus and spectacle-oriented society that, for some, it may as well be a trip to Mars. Although, like Mars, the world of the Carthusian Order is silent, still, and somewhat alien, that world slowly, yet hypnotically seeps into our consciousness. Image and sound—though sound more powerfully than image, as I will discuss below—enter where most of us would dare not go: the realm of silence.

As if God is present in all the small things, we see snowflakes fall silently, flames flicker in the dark, and dust particles float aimlessly on rays of golden sunlight entering a window. A monk prays with devotion while winter establishes its austere dominion outside. Slowly, a completely different sense of time emerges, one which is confident yet almost indiscernible, and can be experienced, it seems, only by leading a quiet life. Throughout the film, we see the simple and contemplative life led by the Carthusian Order, a life of prayer, meditation and reflection; even eating, sleeping, studying and manual labor are carried out in almost complete silence and solitude. As the seasons turn, the monks live their serene, hermetically sealed lives attuned to a universal rhythm that is radically different from what we know. Our version of time, an artfully contrived social convention, feels too frequently like a frantic countdown dictating daily priorities which cannot be ignored without consequence—missed deadlines, pangs of guilt or the creeping feeling that we may not ever have all the time we need to do all we had hoped. However, in the film, and it seems in the monastery itself, time moves slowly and life is not lived in haste. Every action, even the most routine or obligatory task, is undertaken with quiet purpose, so that the simple act of washing a plate, cutting firewood, or making a new robe takes on profound meaning.

“As the seasons turn, the monks live their serene, hermetically sealed lives attuned to a universal rhythm that is radically different from what we know. Our version of time, an artfully contrived social convention, feels too frequently like a frantic countdown dictating daily priorities which cannot be ignored without consequence—missed deadlines, pangs of guilt or the creeping feeling that we may not ever have all the time we need to do all we had hoped. However, in the film, and it seems in the monastery itself, time moves slowly and life is not lived in haste. Every action, even the most routine or obligatory task, is undertaken with quiet purpose, so that the simple act of washing a plate, cutting firewood, or making a new robe takes on profound meaning.”

That meaning is what the monks who live at the Grand Chartreuse seek. Following the dictum that “anyone who does not give up all he has cannot be my disciple,” the monks who belong to this nine-hundred year old monastery have taken a lifelong vow of silence and poverty so that they may contemplate and seek God in their daily lives. Although they are a community, the monks spend most of their time alone in small, Spartan cells, leaving their rooms only at designated times for prayer services, liturgical chanting, or Sunday (and feast day) meals eaten together but in silence. Once a week, the monks take an afternoon walk during which they may speak. Once a year, they are allowed a visit by families left behind in the outside world. What seems like a strict, regimented life—one that no doubt requires great sacrifice and discipline—appears to have its own sense of freedom because it is lived consciously in a perpetual, but silent, present moment.

But it is a misconception to think that, even in a place so removed as the Chartreuse, the moment is lived in pure silence. Like all things, silence is relative. Anyone who has ever meditated knows that when you quiet your surroundings and still your mind, a whole new world of sound emerges of which you were heretofore unaware: a bird chirping in the distance, the rustling of leaves as the breeze blows through the trees, the whirring of a passing car; then there are internal sounds of your body—gastric processes, rhythmic breathing and pulsing heartbeats. Although the monastery contains far fewer extraneous sounds than our world, the ones that exist are meaningful because they are caused by purposeful action. When a monk writes in a notebook or saws a piece of firewood, the by-product of his action is sound. Yet far from being disruptive to the overall mood of silence, sound in the film reveals a world of depth that seems more powerful than the visuals. While what we see is consistent and repetitive, sound made when a monk rings a bell or moves his hand across a piece of fabric as he cuts it, strikes through the surrounding silence as if we are hearing it for the first time. Due to the absence of audio elements like music, sound design or dialogue, sound is experienced in a way that is organic and pure—not the way it would sound in a controlled environment like a studio but in life under real acoustic conditions. The result, for the viewer and I would venture to guess for the monks as well, is an experience of sound as an object worthy of reflection itself.

Philip Groning, the director, stated that he intended the film to be a meditation. Rather than simply depict a monastery, he sought to have the film become one by using “silence,” “repetition” and “rhythm.” The use of silence alone is so powerful that, for me, it achieves his objective. While an ordinary film has layers of sound and story, both of which absorb the mind, Into Great Silence has neither, thereby allowing a direct contemplation of the subject matter through sound and image. Lacking a story, plot or drama to follow, I began to think about the meaning of the monks’ actions, the reasons why they perform certain rituals repeatedly, and how they are still a part of the greater world despite being sequestered and hidden in a monastery. For two hours and forty-nine minutes, I almost felt like I was in the monastery myself, living with the monks, together yet alone, honoring, in solitude and silence, a larger, slower, more profound sense of time.

While the repetition of imagery never bothered me—after all, the monks do live a limited and regimented life—the filmmaker’s choice of repeating title cards with religious dicta did not work. The first two times the dictum “anyone who does not give up all he has cannot be my disciple” were shown onscreen, they were meaningful because the text provided insight into the monks’ austere lives. Though, as the film progressed, the third, fourth and fifth repetitions of that phrase lost meaning because none of the images that preceded or came after the title card related to the aphorism. Moreover, the repetition of this text, along with several other phrases, did not help me better appreciate the monks’ repetitive, ritual-oriented lives; in fact, it began to detract from my experience of contemplation and communion with the subject. Although many of the title cards were initially informative and useful as a formal device, unnecessary repetition diminished the power and purpose of a good idea.

Similarly, I found the editing choppy, sometimes disorienting and generally lacking in rhythm. While the film succeeds in conveying a different sense of time, the episodic moments captured on film are often ended abruptly and no visual explanation is offered. For example, a monk who is a gardener at one point siphons water into a tube at a creek in the forest. He then connects this to another tube. Rather than showing us where that second tube may lead or what its purpose might be—is the monk bringing water to irrigate the garden or taking it to the monastery itself which has no running water?—the episode simply ends there and moves on to the next. While an explanation of monastic life is obviously not the documentary’s intention, the lack of simple establishing or reverse shots that would show us the purpose of an action are glaring omissions.

In a similar vein, I frequently felt that many shots were too short and others put together awkwardly. For example, when individual monks are introduced in the film, it is always after a title card and three at a time, with each monk looking into the camera, one after another. The pattern of introducing the monks in this way not only became predictable, but also proved to be dissatisfying. With so few opportunities to look directly at a monk’s face and see into his eyes, I wanted to gaze at each person for far longer than he was onscreen. One would think, with these more intimate views, the shot would naturally run long since it’s the only chance the film gives you to meditate on the actual person, rather than on his anonymous actions. Unfortunately, the shots are not very long and, coming in successions of three, merely condition you to expect the shot pattern rather than allow communion with each individual monk, which I believe is the intention.

“At times fluid, at times rough, the film lacks a cohesive pace and ultimately offers, not a tranquil journey, but a choppy ride…And yet, despite its shortcomings, this film must be celebrated for its intimate exploration of a place many of us will never know. That place is not simply the Grand Chartreuse monastery but the abode of silence we carry within ourselves yet seldom hear because the noise of our world is deafening.”

Likewise, various sequences of monastery establishing shots seem to lack rhythm in the way they are constructed. The length of individual shots often feels arbitrary: some are too short, others too long. More than once I noticed that a shot was unnecessarily repeated, usually from a dramatically different angle, thereby causing a jarring effect. Since these particular shots had no subject except for an empty hallway, I wondered if they were mistakes or if the editor (in this case, the filmmaker himself) was not very experienced. The result of these sequences is that they do not facilitate a smooth narrative flow, one that would have done much to facilitate the kind of meditative state the director wanted to induce. At times fluid, at times rough, the film lacks a cohesive pace and ultimately offers, not a tranquil journey, but a choppy ride. In my opinion, if Into Great Silence has one major flaw it’s the editing. I feel like a big opportunity was missed to craft a work of art, one that would have had its own unique and beautiful sense of rhythm, and would have provided not only a rare window into an insular world, but also succeeded as a profound meditation on time.

And yet, despite its shortcomings, this film must be celebrated for its intimate exploration of a place many of us will never know. That place is not simply the Grand Chartreuse monastery but the abode of silence we carry within ourselves yet seldom hear because the noise of our world is deafening.