Silent Light

So I just watched Silent Light. I went on a suggestion from a friend's email, and boy, did I fucking hate it. 

The movie is an overlong, stiff, pretentious piece of doggerel with a bullshit supernatural miraculous ending - ripped off straight from Ordet. It's not just leisurely; it's interminable. An empty shot. Two characters walk into it and slouch near each other. They neither say nor do anything interesting.  There's a cut to a closer shot of one of the actors. After a beat, the actor dutifully recites his lines. Cut to the other actor, who waits a beat before dutifully reciting more insipid dialogue. Eventually, they leave the shot and the camera lingers . . . and lingers . . . In one typical scene, two characters are standing near each other. One says, "Let's go look at the snow." Never mind that they are already standing in snow. They turn and clumsily lumber through the snow for ten feet before stopping and looking at a barn. The camera then pans 180 degrees - slowly passing an empty field before settling on the two actors, staring emptily in different directions (that is, when they're not glancing directly into the camera - I'm looking at you, Grampa!). They wait a beat before mumbling their pedestrian dialogue. They leave the scene. After a moment, there's a cut back to the empty field. This takes about ten minutes to play out. 

Moments when I laughed out loud. 

• When two characters, carrying on an affair, strip down and look at each other - rather than actually, oh say, touching each other or embracing or kissing, etc. 
• In typical fashion, we cut to an old man sitting in a chair, staring off into space. We then cut to the son, standing in front of a bare wall and staring at a calendar while a clock ticks in the background. The entire movie is full of these ridiculously stiffly blocked compositions that Wes Anderson has so thoroughly spoofed. At this moment, I thought, perhaps the movie is making fun of overly austere meditations on nothing. Sadly, no. 
• When the doctor suggests that one character's "attack of the heart" was brought on by obesity. A character who weighs all of ninety pounds soaking wet. 

Typical children's dialogue:

"I hope Daddy buys us some sweets." "Me, too."