Free Republic

The strictest monastic order in Christendom has opened its cloisters to a film director for the first time, allowing him to shoot a three-hour near-silent documentary about its life.What some critics feared would be this year's most boring movie turns out to be a strangely fascinating meditation on the Grande Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps.Into Great Silence depicts its Carthusian monks in the midst of their slow moving daily devotions and duties, from mending shoes to chopping vegetables.There are even rare moments of jollity: two monks sliding down a snowy slope in their white habits, laughing hysterically, and an...