The opening sequence in the film SILENT LIGHT of a starry night making way to dawn and the ground tells it all.  It is a long, almost silent 6-minute start that will leave many in the audience already yawning, just like one of the children in the next scene having breakfast to the sound of the tick-tock of the clock’s pendulum.

The film centres on a Mennonite family living in Mexico.  The father falls for another woman and the drama (besides the drama of me doing stuff while seated to keep awake) concerns how the family copes in their own Mennonite way.  The characters speak in the rare German dialect of Plattdeutsch.

SILENT LIGHT is an intensely personal and needless to say, slow ponderous film running a long 140 minutes.  It has its pleasures no doubt.  I could myself sit outside at dawn for hours watching the sun rise every morning and feel ecstatic at the beauty of nature.  But I do not do it.  In the same way, the pleasure derived from SILENT NIGHT will only be experienced by a small minority of cineastes.  I could not sit still watching this film myself.  But don’t get me wrong.  Certain slow movies are necessary to make a point - for example Jacques Rivette’s 4-hour LA BELLE NOISEUSE.  But spending say 4 minutes to have a character walk or drive to his destination is too much.  It seems wicked that Reygadas is forcing his audience to sit through his extremely long takes in order to be fascinated.  The result in my case is distraction and boredom.  If this is my cup of tea, I would not wait and hour to drink it.