Over the past week I decided to watch a documentary called, Into Great Silence.  This film was the project of one man who visited a specific monastery in the French Alps known as the Grand Chartreuse.  The monastery is not open to the public, and the monks spend the majority of their time in prayer for the Church and humanity.  In fact, there are only a few select times in the weeks and months, where the monks are permitted to converse with each other.

With this information in mind, I was very intrigued.   I was excited and ready to watch this almost three hour documentary, hoping to catch a glimpse of how these monks spend each of their days.  I heard that the documentary shows footage of life in the monastary, and with the exception of a few conversations and liturgical chants, the majority of the film has no speaking.  This didn’t matter to me…I wanted to peer into this monastical world.  Not to mention, critically, I had only heard tremendous things about this film.  I was ready to see what this documentary was all about.

Unfortunately, my watching of this film was not very successful.  For the first 15 minutes of this documentary, I sat still, fascinated by the quiet peace the monks lived in.  After about 15 minutes passed, I stopped to take care of something else.  Returned to the film…became distracted by my iPhone….watched more of the film…fell asleep.  Started the film the next day…became distracted by the iPhone…fell asleep again.  Today, finally with 20 minutes left, I made every effort to sit still and watch this film, and for the most part my viewing of the last 20 minutes was successful…well, pretty successful.

So, why was watching this film so difficult?  Watching these monks take each day with such peaceful, quiet, conviction….    Not to mention, I also learned that the director had to wait for 16 years before the monks gave permission for him to film at the monastery!  For the director, the entire process took 21 years!  I had a hard time sitting still for 21 minutes.   So, I ask myself this question again…Why is it so difficult to sit still and observe the monks of the Carthusian Monastery?  Did I completely miss the beauty of this documentary?

These are questions I’ll address tomorrow in my next post.  In the meantime, you can check the trailer below.

-jonathan