Monks and liberators: 'Into Great Silence' tells story of monks; battle to end slavery is subject of 'Amazing Grace'

In 1984 a novice German filmmaker, Philip Groning, wrote the Carthusian monks of the Grand Chartreuse, asking permission to make a documentary about their life in common. Sixteen years later, they telephoned him that they were ready. The director was allowed to record, without crew or artificial lighting, the life of the monastery, set in the French Alps. Mr. Groning lived at the charterhouse for six months, learning how to penetrate the work rhythms of the monks. It was, he says, particularly exhausting at night: "I have to admit that I omitted night prayers a couple of times."

A near-silent film--though there are sounds of footsteps, chant, animals, the weather, and the labor of the monks--the film he made, Into Great Silence, runs for 162 minutes. When an elderly blind monk with long white eyebrows speaks directly to the camera, we understand we are near the end, but remain intent on his simple words about God's goodness and the readiness for death. There is no plot line, but the introduction of two postulants near the beginning, a glowing display of the changing seasons, and a suggestive framing of short subsections encourage us to pay closer attention to patterns as they slowly unfold.

The Carthusians were founded in 1084, and though the director shows us a computer and a few electric lights, life in this charterhouse seems to go on as quietly and unhurriedly as it must have been lived there for centuries. The monks live in community, but everyone keeps to himself. We observe monks planting, cooking, chanting, chopping wood, getting their hair cut, and even taking a walk outside when some talking is permitted.

The movie is not concerned to fill us with facts about the history of the order, nor do we learn anything about the background of individual monks. We simply observe these men in their cells, each with a straw bed and a little tin box for a stove, reading, eating, praying, quietly looking out the window. Mr. Groning never pries, but fortunately includes quite a number of photographs of their peaceable, kindly faces in close-ups.

Everything is clean, orderly, minimal--and harmonious. The director says that originally he wanted to make a film about the movement of time. "In a film about silence, this experience of time is swept up to the surface. And this, in turn, is directly connected to the way the monks live: in an absolutely rigid temporal structure that lays down when something has to be done and the rules according to which it has to be done."

Winner of the 2006 European Film Academy Award for best documentary, "Into Great Silence" is a movie that everyone interested in contemplation--or the contemplative possibilities of film--should see. Obviously, it will not be at your neighborhood multiplex and may not even play in your city, but NCR will alert you when it is available on DVD.

Amazing Grace is a portrayal of William Wilberforce's long and unrelenting fight to abolish the slave trade in England during the late 18th century. A member of the English parliament, he and a small group of Quaker activists struggled to end the economically profitable but reprehensible British slave empire. Aided by a superb cast, director Michael Apted has made the Wilberforce story exciting and credible.

As Wilberforce, the stunning good looks of Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd ("Fantastic Four") brings a romantic and noble shading to this historical figure who by all contemporary accounts was a small and foppish man. It begins when a sick and exhausted Wilberforce stops during a carriage journey in the pouring rain to save a horse from being beaten to death by its owners. A series of flashbacks show the formation of his initial convictions as an abolitionist, clearly based on his strong religious beliefs. He visits his childhood mentor, the slave ship captain turned repentant cleric, John Newman (who also penned the film's title song), played with a gruff and saddened remorse by the ubiquitous acting veteran Albert Finney. Newman helps temper Wilberforce's ideals with descriptions of the death-filled journeys he shepherded for more than 20 years.

Wilberforce will later meet Oloudah Equiano (played by the Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour), a freed slave whose memoirs become a bestseller in England. Oloudagh takes William on a tour of a newly arrived slave ship where hundreds of Africans have been chained for weeks in claustrophobic conditions. Later, the hero takes several prominent citizens and their wives on a harbor cruise that includes the survey of a wretched, foul-smelling slave ship. Repeatedly met with resistance, Wilberforce practices shrewd politics and is helped immeasurably by his activist wife (Romola Garai), who nurses and encourages him throughout his campaign.

The cast is the driving force behind the film's success, including such fine English actors as Michael Gambon as the sympathetic Lord Charles Fox, Benedict Cumberbatch as William Pitt the Younger, and Toby Jones as the Duke of Clarence, a nasty opposition member of parliament. Some may find a "Masterpiece Theatre" quality to this production and the main character sometimes appears more saintly than human. But the tale is captivating, rescuing from near-oblivion a remarkable man who by constant perseverance was able to change history without firing a shot.