Stellet Light – Silent Light (2007)

Directed by: Carlos Reygadas | 142 minutes | drama | Actors: Elizabeth Fehr, Jacobo Klassen, Maria Pankratz, Miriam Toews, Cornelio Wall, Peter Wall

This taciturn drama fits in with Lars von Trier’s ‘Breaking the Waves’, Bruno Dumont’s ‘Flandres’ and Diego Martínez Vignatti’s ‘La Marea’. She resembles all the examples, but even more than those three films, ‘Stellet Licht’ (‘silent light’) is a portrait of a community: the Mennonites, a group of Protestants related to the Amish who founded colonies in northern Europe from Europe. and Latin America.

To this day, the Mennonites speak Plautdietsch, a mishmash of German and Dutch dialects from earlier centuries. Director Carlos Reygadas (‘Batalla en el cielo’) lets his non-professional actors speak the language and, with protagonists Cornelio Wall Fehr (the doubting farmer Johan) and Miriam Toews (his wife Esther), even has authentic descendants on hand.

It will certainly not be a matter of authenticity in ‘Stellet Licht’: all roles are subdued, but acted expressively and Reygadas leaves no detail untouched. For example, the emptiness of the Mennonites’ work- and church-oriented life is poignantly expressed in the ticking of the clock at family gatherings; the slow camerawork has the same effect as in ‘La Marea’, in which a woman is followed in her lonely mourning: she sucks you into an intimate world that is not yours and can only be understood through careful observation.

However, there are limits. Reygadas presses the tempo in such a way that the emotional moments disappear into the void; the last shot – a minute-long sunset – is even too much. However penetrating a portrait of a community in which good and evil have been fixed for centuries, ‘Stellet Licht’ is, the individual drama drowns in the plot-poor imagery. Beautiful moments are certainly there, but they are mainly centered around the clash of the archaic subculture with the modern age and tell us nothing new about extramarital love: it hurts everyone involved for the Mennonites too.