Memorable Movie

I had a memorable movie experience over the weekend. Though I watched the movie together with Pam, I don’t know if the movie was as memorable for her as it was for me. It was a foreign language film and I could understand the language better than she could. What language was it in? Low German, of course! The movie was Stellet Licht (Silent Light in English). It is set in a community of Mexican Mennonites and is about a man who has an affair and then must deal with the effects the affair on his relationships with his wife and children. Because the Low German dialect was a little different than the one I grew up around, I wasn’t able to catch all of the dialogue. However, I didn’t have to rely on the subtitles completely and I was even able to pick out some places where the subtitles slightly misrepresented what was actually said. The pace of the movie was a bit on the slow side, but it managed to hold my attention. It provided a fascinating view of life in a Mexican Mennonite community.

One of the most memorable scenes in the movie occurs after one of the main characters dies. While some family members prepare the body for final viewing and burial, others, all dressed in black, sit in a large circle around the perimeter of an adjacent room. Most of the time is spent in silence, but sometimes they sing. After the body has been prepared, people are permitted to go and say their last goodbyes. Although I’ve never been part of such a funeral event, I’m sure the scene would be a familiar one to my grandparents.

There were other memorable scenes in the movie, though they weren’t memorable for the same reasons. One, in particular, involved the main character and the woman with which he was having an affair. (Only readers who are familiar with conservative Mennonites will know why this scene was so memorable.) Imagine a woman in a floral-print dress and black kerchief and a man in jeans and sweat-matted hair standing in the middle of a field of long grass. Now imagine them in a passionate kiss that seems to go on for hours.