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Everything begins under the best auspices. In a long opening sequence shot of astounding beauty, Carlos Reygadas films the sunrise. A day when the forces of nature begin. The camera moves with little steps, as if to not disturb the natural course of things and the soundtrack recreates all of the rustles, the animal noises, and the murmur of a world awakening. From the beginning, one recognizes the savoir-faire of the director who already made his mark with the excellent Japon and the polemic Battle in Heaven. The shots that follow are fixed for the most part, and they leave no detail to chance: the members of a family, framed as if they were part of a still life painting, carry in them a foreshadowed drama. What Reygadas presents is rough, cold, assumed and thought out. We are in Mexico, in the heart of a Plautdietsch-speaking (a dialect between Dutch and German) inward-looking Mennonite community that lives by its own rules, its own dogmas, and its own vision of the world. When the adulterous father acknowledges that he has rejoined his mistress, his wife almost instantaneously succumbs to sorrow. Certainly the most beautiful scene, the death of the woman betrayed at the foot of a tree under pouring rain, is placed at the center of a film which unrolls its aesthetic at a snail's pace, and the sudden appearance of the supernatural is all the more surprising. The end won't be given away here, so much the worse for those who might cede to the temptation of giving up on watching the film before all the secrets are revealed. But for what? In spite of a few surprises in the story, the film doesn't manage to let go of its formal beauty. Only boredom remains. A film with a cyclical structure, a film about redemption and rebirth, Silent Light closes as it began, with a sunset. An elegant and slow traveling shot comes to embrace a sky silently invaded by night. Happiness for audiences able to keeping their eyes open long enough in order to witness this setting sun. Translated into English by Anji Milanovic 
 Revolución review
Battle in Heaven
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