Ironic Movie Reviews

[_Aristotle Smith]

One of my favorite documentary films is "Into Great Silence" by Philip Gröning. It's a documentary about the life of the Carthusian monks who live at the Grande Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps. The Carthusians are very ascetic and very isolated, so just being able to film how the monastery operates was a bit of a coup by Gröning.

I highly recommend it to anyone, with the proviso that you understand that this is going to be the slowest film you will probably ever watch. But that's the point, you simply cannot make a film about the Carthusians that is exciting, because that's not their life. The film also has to be fairly long, three hours in length, to document the rhythms of the monk's lives. If this doesn't interest you, don't watch it, you're going to hate it.

But here's where the irony comes in. Allow me to direct you to the rotten tomatoes page for the film: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/into_great_silence/

As you can see it gets an 87% "fresh" rating, which is very high for rotten tomatoes. The funny part is that two of the negative reviews were from Utah film critics. Here's what they wrote:

Makes you wish [director Groening] would have kept the film to about 90 or 100 minutes. A little time spent in the monastery is fine, but nearly three hours is an endurance test.

Highly ironic coming from a Utahn; replace "monastery" with "Mormon church" and the truth value of the statement stays the same.

After an hour or so, you can appreciate Gröning's meditative pacing - but by the end of the second hour, contemplation may be overwhelmed by an itch for a good car chase.

A common thought for many Mormons having completed the second hour of meetings on Sunday I am sure.

[_gramps]

LOL on the SLC irony.

Will watch it tonight.

Thanks a lot. Just exactly the movie that would interest me at this time.

Will come back to comment. How did I miss this the first time around? I don't know. But, again thanks a lot!