Here is a link to a terrific interview with Mr Groening, the director of, Into Great Silence, a film of monastic life taken at The Grande Chartreuse, charterhouse of the Carthusian monastic order. In response to what his film is meant to convey Growning says,

“The film should become a monastery…A monastery is about getting rid of speech. Speech is constantly implying this logical way of structuring time and thought. Silence throws you into the present, in the sense of not thinking about how you get your key out of your pocket.

The immediate object, the presence of immediate things, becomes much more luminous. It’s really like a consolation. The material world, the creation, helps you to be in the world, it’s as if God had created the world in order for us to feel at home. But that sort of future planning capacity really drops.

This is what the monastery is about; this is what I tried in the film.

Here is the link to this fascinating interview with the man who has created a work of art that is bound to touch thousands.