Ray Pride

(2005) Producer-director-editor Philip Gröning's "Into Great Silence," a humble 162-minute documentary about a silent order of monks in the French Alps' Grand Chartreuse monastery--shot without crew or lighting--is long, but, as you would expect, meditative, as it captures rhythms of the daily lives of the reluctant subjects and arrives at a pace of its own. There are rewards for endurance. Gröning has demonstrated a gift for framing, light and shadow in earlier films like 2000's "L'amour, l'argent, l'amour," a more frantic affair filled with wrenchingly gorgeous images in a shaggy dog form not unlike that of Herr Wenders. From that city symphony anxious to hit the highway, Gröning now seeks a more benevolent poetry. At its best moments, "Into Great Silence" arrives at Vermeeresque minimalism and the result is transfixing. 162m.

"Into Great Silence" opens Friday at the Music Box.

(2007-03-27)

Also by Ray Pride

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Earnest research and many conversations resulted in "Reign Over Me," the powerful Adam Sandler-starring drama about a widower unable to forget the loss of his family
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(2007-03-20)

Moving Pictures
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France's official entry to the 2006 Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, Danièle Thompson's "Avenue Montaigne" is yet one more Altmanesque roundelay, more tidy than those of the late master, yet still an enjoyable one
(2007-03-13)

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Young American
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