I've got a friend, Oskar, a photographer and painter in the warehouse district of St. Paul, who has a state of the art digital projection system in his studio.
He recently purchased a copy of Into Great Silence and had me over last night to view it.
(Of course, we also had start with a couple drinks made with Green Chartreuse, the liquor made by the Carthusian monks at Grand Chartreuse, where the documentary was filmed.)
The documentary, if you've not heard of it, consists entirely of video of the monks going about their daily lives, most of which is done in silence.
A monk prays in his cell.
A bent and stooped gardener clears snow from a plot of ground.
A blind brother sits at his table.
They pray together.
They sled in the snow.
They chant.
One sits in a red doorway eating a bowl of soup.
One measures cloth for cutting.
And then it's over.
When it finished at 9:45, I looked at Oskar and said, "Let's watch it again."
He said, "OK. You want a Mona Lisa or a C and T?"
At midnight, Osakar's girlfriend Denise came by to remind him that they were supposed to go to the Sage Wine Bar together tonight with some friends. Oops. She's a very understanding person. We put a frozen pizza in the oven, popped some popcorn and started the film again.
At 2:15 Oskar carved a little hole through the ice on his windshield and drove me home across the high bridge through the silence of snow and sleet covered streets.
He recently purchased a copy of Into Great Silence and had me over last night to view it.
(Of course, we also had start with a couple drinks made with Green Chartreuse, the liquor made by the Carthusian monks at Grand Chartreuse, where the documentary was filmed.)
The documentary, if you've not heard of it, consists entirely of video of the monks going about their daily lives, most of which is done in silence.
A monk prays in his cell.
A bent and stooped gardener clears snow from a plot of ground.
A blind brother sits at his table.
They pray together.
They sled in the snow.
They chant.
One sits in a red doorway eating a bowl of soup.
One measures cloth for cutting.
And then it's over.
When it finished at 9:45, I looked at Oskar and said, "Let's watch it again."
He said, "OK. You want a Mona Lisa or a C and T?"
At midnight, Osakar's girlfriend Denise came by to remind him that they were supposed to go to the Sage Wine Bar together tonight with some friends. Oops. She's a very understanding person. We put a frozen pizza in the oven, popped some popcorn and started the film again.
At 2:15 Oskar carved a little hole through the ice on his windshield and drove me home across the high bridge through the silence of snow and sleet covered streets.
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