Into Great Silence a documentary movie about
Roman Catholic Cathusian monks, who lives in stillness
I've been told by a friend (Matthijs) about a Roman Catholic
Monastery located in France known under the name of Le grande
chartreuse
He mentioned in a casual talk this monastery is one of the most
interesting Roman Catholic Monastery. It's basicly a Roman Catholic
order of Cathusian monks who has decided to live in silence.
The monks there are allowed to speak just a bit and only on
Sundays, the rest of the days there is a rule in the monastery that
the monks live in complete silence.
This definitely catched my attention, since I've red in the
Ancient Paterik a book about the sayings and livings of the
early Holy Church fathers about this stillness practiced widely
being in practice by the monks especially in the early ages after
Christ's resurrection.
I've red in that book that in the ancient times there were hermits
who lived a live like as Hesychasts in complete silence. Some of
this holy men I read in the old books haven't told a word for many
years (30 years!).
This from the modern stand point is completely impossible to
achieve spiritual heroism.
Most of the monasteries we have in the Orthodox Christian world
doesn't any more keep this kind of silence practice, the only
monasteries I know where they still have this stillness practice in
our Orthodox Christian monasteries is among monasteries and
brotherhoods situated on the the Holy Mount Athos
From that perspective it's very interesting to see that the Roman
Catholics has still monks who still live up to an ancient church
practices.
It was quite interesting for me to read a bit more about the
Grande
Chartreuse monastery in wikipedia
A documentary movie was produced about the monastery by Philip
Gröning . The movie came out in 2005 under the name Into a
great silence . The movie director Philip Gröning spend 6
months in the monastery shooting the movie and he spend another 2.5
years to edit the film and prepare it for the general public.
That's really a hell a lot of time. What is unique about the movie
is it contains no commentaries or any sound effects added and
everything was recorded without any artificial light.
Even the Cathusian monks loved the film. The movie trailer I found
as a quite interesting one to see:
Here is the movie trailer;
Along with that I found it interesting to see a movie prepared by
some pilgrim on his road towards the Grande Chartreuse
monastery;