The beauty of the opening shot of Silent Light, the latest film from Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas (Battle in Heaven, Japón), is matched only by its closing shot.  These two shots neatly enclose Silent Light’s universe, which focuses on a family in a Mennonite community in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua.  The first film with dialogue almost entirely in Plautdietsch, the language of Russian Mennonites, Reygadas uses primarily non-professional actors in the story of a man caught between his fidelity to his wife and family, and his fidelity to his infidelity, so to speak. 

The setting and the language create an immediate alienation-effect. While initially I was overwhelmed by the ethnographic gulf between the austere Mennonite lifestyle and my own, their religiosity gradually becomes a minor contingency in what is essentially an ethical parable filled with moments of subtle humor and magic realism, the best make-out scene I can remember, I think the best post-coitus shot I’ve ever seen, and a fantastic interlude featuring a sweat-drenched Jacques Brel performing on a TV in the back of a van. Stylistically, and arguably thematically, Silent Light echoes directors like Terrence Malick, Carl Dreyer, and Tarkovsky, and part of its success comes from the way it draws on them without allowing their influence to dominate the film. It’s spectacular and at the Film Forum through January 20th.