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Silent Light (2009) How do we know that the images of filmmaker Carlos Reygadas — a slowly awakening dawn, a married farmer kissing the woman he loves —… Unrated PT136M Drama Maria Pankratz Cornelio Wall Miriam Toews Peter Wall Palisades Pictures
Movie Review

Silent Light (2009)

MPAA Rating: Unrated
Reviewed by | Jan 14, 2009

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Dim Light : This tale of adultery moves at a snail's pace
Dim Light: This tale of adultery moves at a snail's pace
EW's GRADE
C

Details Limited Release: Jan 07, 2009; Rated: Unrated; Length: 136 Minutes; Genre: Drama; With: Maria Pankratz and Cornelio Wall; Distributor: Palisades Pictures

How do we know that 
the images of filmmaker Carlos Reygadas — a slowly awakening dawn, a married farmer kissing the woman he loves — are reverently artful? 
 Because Reygadas holds them for what feels 
like eternity. He creates 
 a meditation that drifts into torpor. Set in a 
Mennonite community in Mexico, Silent Light, a glacial tale of adultery, features a "miraculous" climax — 
it mingles the living and the dead — ripped off from Carl Dreyer's Ordet (1955), one of the great religious films. The stab at sublimity-by-proxy doesn't take. C

Originally posted Jan 14, 2009 Published in issue #1031 Jan 23, 2009 Order article reprints