听 User Rating 
'In The Company Of Monks' could've been the alternative title for Into Great Silence, a documentary that invites viewers inside a remote French monastery. For two and a half hours. With few human sounds aside from chanting. It sounds more like an endurance test than entertainment, yet this one-of-a-kind experience proves surprisingly immersive. While keeping his camera at a discreet distance, helmer Philip Gr么ning captures a serenely vivid sense of the rhythms, rituals and repetitions that define the day-to-day lives of these devout souls.
The story behind the film is itself worthy of documentation. Gr么ning originally approached the Grand Prior of the Carthusian Order (one of the Roman Catholic Church's strictest brotherhoods) with his idea some 19 years ago. Almost a decade and a half on, he was granted permission to shoot inside the Grande Chartreuse, a monastery located high in the French Alps. Certain conditions applied: no commentary, no music, no artificial light - and no crew apart from Gr么ning himself, who for a time, lived in a cell like the other brothers.
"SOOTHING. MOVING AND HYPNOTIC"
Such restrictions lend the film an austere integrity that suits its subject matter entirely. Without droning voiceover, it's far easier to appreciate the stillness and seclusion of the lives depicted. You can't help feeling curious about the personal histories of these remarkably dedicated men, but the film's aim is to observe rather than pry. Patience is certainly required, but the effect of seeing the same actions (reading, praying, working) performed over and again does become soothingly, movingly hypnotic. And there are moments of true enlightenment: who would have thought monks went sledging on their days off?
