Guilt and Absolution: Carlos Reygadas's 'Silent Light'

Maria Pankratz as Marianne in Silent Light

If sin is a pursuit for the holidays, and redemption for the cold dawn of the year, then Carlos Reygadas's Silent Light is the rare happy film to have gone into theatrical release at the perfect moment. Now beginning an American run (at New York's Film Forum) after a long string of festival screenings, it comes into January with guilt and absolution as its very theme--I might almost say its rhythm.

There's a sense of contraction and expansion, as the events pulse through a small, tradition-bound religious community but a very broad rural landscape. The characters, by upbringing and godly habit, try to contain their feelings; the wide plains and distant mountains, meanwhile, draw their attention (and the camera's) toward something grander and more enduring than human life. And so, for all the intensity of the film, its style suits the new year like a hangover remedy. With bravura austerity, Reygadas chases the effects of December's cinematic bender: the stupefying round of Oscar contenders, the would-be amusements for the whole undemanding family.

As for Reygadas's setting--the present-day Mennonite community of Chihuahua--it would make Silent Light a rare film no matter when it was released. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first Mexican production to be shot mostly in a German dialect with a cast of blond, blue-eyed nonprofessionals.

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