Cheap Into Great Silence (Two-Disc Set) (DVD) (Philip Gröning) Price

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Customer Reviews of Into Great Silence (Two-Disc Set)

This movie is a taste of the "real thing."
I saw this movie in a theater a few weeks ago and have ordered the DVD set so that I can get it when it first comes out. <
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>Years ago I spent a year and a half in an American Zen Monestary, watching this movie made me want to sell my house and go back to the quiet and timelessness of a meditative life. Other reviewers have complained that this movie is boring or should have contained more interviews with monks, more action. However I think that the movie is perfect the way it is. Meditative life is a direct experience deep quiet. Talking about it isn't the experience. Sitting in a movie theater in silence watching dust motes float in a beam of light allows us to have a little taste of the experience. By the end of the movie I was breathing deeply in a smooth, slow rythym and feeling both peace and joy. <
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>Thank you Philip Groning

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A few bright spots but ultimately missed the mark.
I've been anxiously awaiting the arrival of this film in my area for months. When it finally got here I couldn't get to the theater fast enough. As a long time fan of the Carthusian Order and after years of reading any book I could find about them, the idea of getting an inside look at their lives on film was akin to winning the lottery as far as I was concerned. The result after viewing the film twice is the following... <
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>Their is a note at the end of the film that it took something along the lines of thirteen years to get permission from the Order to film the project. With that much of a wait, I would like to believe that Groning could have come up with better ideas as to how to take advantage of the unprecedented opportunity he was given. <
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>Minus one segment, their is no interaction with the monks at all in the form of spoken word/interviews. No listening to what they have to say about the life, their struggles, their joys. Instead the viewer is made to sit through tedious shots of water dripping off of eating bowls and random stills of furniture. <
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>The film is entirely too long. If the useless artistic shots were taken out at least the film would be digestible instead of being as one reviewer has already stated, "a cure for insomnia". <
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>Their were a few bright spots. The footage of the monks playing in the snow was brilliant. Again, more of this kind of candid footage would have made the film much better. Also, the scene involving feeding the local cats was tops on my list. These types of scenes show the Carthusian in a light that is refreshing and if anything makes any of us regardless of our religious affiliations, respect their vocations more. <
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>It's my hope that the DVD will have more interview footage and if anything else, the nearly three hour yawn-fest can be broken up in segments to make it more watchable. The Carthusians are an amazing Order with a charism that is unlike any other in the world and in many ways in history. This film hardly captures any of that.

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Discipline beyond the norm.
I was able to view this film in a theater. For those contemplating this DVD set, I would say that it is a very intense experience. Not intense in the usual way of films with all of the hoopla and noise and action, but more in the discovery of what possibly could be going on in the context of each screen shot. I have seen this film reviewed as being not unlike a computer monitor screensaver slidewhow. It is much more than that, but that gives you a general idea. <
> Having been in a couple of Benedictine Monastaries myself, I can assure you that those places feel like Country Clubs compared to the setting of the Carthusian Order. I came away with a profound respect for these men who have elected to live their life in prayer and devotion to Our Lord. <
> This would be of interest to those who want to know more about those men who have chosen the utmost in devotion to Christ...and in turn, it can possibly lead people to examine the fact that in spite of the pace of their lives, there really is time to pray each and every day.