Dawn breaks over the Mexican Mennonite territory and the day begins for the family of Johan (Cornelio Wall). He leads them in saying grace, then they tuck into their breakfast bowls of cereal and Johan mentions to his wife Esther (Miriam Toews) that he needs to get going so he may visit the local garage to obtain a new crankshaft for his tractor. Their children leave the kitchen and Johan is alone, lost in thought; when his wife walks up to him, he tells her he loves her and she comforts him a little, then he is alone again. And he breaks down in tears...
When I say "dawn breaks" that is grievously underselling the beauty of the lengthy shot which opens writer and director Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light, which goes from a vision of darkest night then gradually changes to the sun emerging over the horizon, light streaming through the trees and clouds above. If it looks magical, then perhaps it is Reygadas preparing us for what is a pretty unlikely way of wrapping up his drama, but you won't know it for the most part of the running time, which is taken up with the marital woes of our guilt-ridden protagonist.
In fact, things take a long time to happen in this community, so the matter of Johan's affair is the equivalent of a sensational storyline in your average rural soap opera. Yet the director keeps his cards close to his chest, swallowing up the minutes with sequences of driving and the washing of the kids' hair until we eventually realise that not only is Johan cheating on his wife, but she's all too aware of it. He seems quite happy with this set-up, and the remorse he feels is something he can live with because he is too weak to give up his bit on the side Marianne (Maria Pankratz); for Esther it may be a different matter.
Actually, there's no may be about it, if anything she feels worse than Johan does. Our fallible man is all too keen to unburden himself on his friends and his father, as if he receives a kind of catharsis from letting others in on his dilemma, but is he really all that sympathetic? As the plot progresses to take in farming, a raunchy sex scene (for a film about an obscure religious sect, anyway) and a bizarre interlude where some of the characters have a break to watch and giggle at Jacques Brel on a tiny television screen, you can't help but sense that Reygadas is pussyfooting around his themes.
This view is only reinforced by the way that tragedy intrudes on the lives of these people and rather than allow Johan to live with the consequences of his selfishness, he actually gets a fright followed by a treat that can only make him think his actions were not so bad after all. The women are the ones who have genuine suffering, and Johan is never more content than when he is wallowing in his own brand of self-inflicted misery. I suppose that in such an austere society that any joy born of making a true connection with another can be intoxicating, but the one true example of this is between the two women in the story. This leaves Johan getting the best of all worlds, with grounds for him to self-indulgently feel sorry for himself accompanied by a possibly supernatural boost, a development which should leave any reasonable viewer indignant. "Poor Johan" indeed! At least it ends with a beautiful sunset.
