The Film Society were showing Into Great Silence last night at the Parish Hall. It's a film I've wanted to see for quite a while - and I wasn't the only one. There was a capacity crowd of 82 people - and one lady had walked all the way from Clifford in the rain to see it. She got several offers of lifts back, partly because it would have been past midnight when she got home if she had to walk back.
It's a very long film, at nearly 3 hours, and it follows a year at the monastery of La Grande Chartreuse, which is the mother house of the Carthusian order, the most austere order of monks in Europe. It's also, like the order, almost silent.
And it was wonderful.
There was an interval about halfway through, for leg stretching and toilet break, and everyone who wanted to brought their own drinks and glasses. And cushions. There were tables dotted about among the rows of chairs with little candles on them, which makes it all a bit more of an occasion than grim rows of seats facing the screen.
The Film Society put on a huge variety of films that are not available at the local multiplex - or in our case, the Odeon in Hereford or the cinema in Brecon (also the Odeon, I think).
Coming up next is a Bollywood extravaganza called Devdas, a Romeo and Juliet type story for Valentine's Day, with Indian sweetmeats and snacks available. That's followed by a 1964 Hitchcock movie, Marnie, starring a very young Sean Connery, and the following month, it's Mandarin with subtitles for the Chinese film Lust, Caution, set in wartime (1942) Hong Kong and Shanghai.
So we're not exactly a cultural backwater here!
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