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The screen is black. A mass of ambient sounds emerges to pull the viewer into an immediate state of hypnosis. Crickets and a plethora of other insects are making their voices heard. Cattle and roosters join in, birds chirping, all while the camera slowly spins around with the grace of a Hitchcock film. At first a bit disorientating, soon it's evident we're looking at the nighttime sky onscreen, clouds and stars all together to form a perfect symbiosis with the soundtrack. The camera settles, and some light appears on the horizon. As the sun rises, two trees prominently frame the scene. The camera pulls in slowly to take in an amazing image of a rural Mexican sunrise over a vast field of farmland — the color palate a hybrid of Van Gogh and Monet landscapes in one single, real-time, breathtaking moving image. It is now morning, and the film begins.

Award-winning writer/director Carlos Reygadas's latest film, Silent Light (Stellet Licht), gushes with pastoral beauty from its memorable opening shot. No cold, distant, computer-generated trickery on display here, simply the natural world photographed impeccably. The film had its Minnesota premiere screening, followed by a Q & A with Reygadas, Friday, April 25, as part of Cinemateca: Contemporary Film from Latin America at the Walker Art Center.

Reygadas, Mexico City-born filmmaker, began his university career in Brussels, studying and practicing law. During his time in Brussels, he would often go to the Museum of cinema to see as many as three films in one day. Heavily influenced by the works of Tarkovsky, Rossellini, Bresson, Dreyer, Ozu, and Kurosawa, he eventually decided he had to go to film school to be surrounded by the tools he needed to become a filmmaker. Pushed by a friend to make short films, and given a super-8 camera, Reygadas learned how to use the tools of cinema by "doing." He immediately knew what he wanted to shoot and was full of ideas.

From 1998 to 1999, Reygadas made four short films, learning how to draw storyboards, produce, write, direct, shoot, and work with actors. He honed his style during his early works: Adult (Adulte - '98), Prisoners (Prisonniers - '99), Birds (Oiseaux - '99), and Super Human (Maxhumain - '99).

Super Human, a six minute, 20 second short, deals with suicide (a popular subject in his features) and Reygadas's own questions regarding God. It opens with a narration. The main character remembers a conversation he had with his mother: If you commit suicide should you go to heaven? (Reygadas has said in interviews he feels it's a great human capacity to end our lives if we want.) His mother responds by telling him that what God gives us, only He can take back.

—Yes, but if God were perfect he would not test us.
—Life is a gift not a test.

I admired my mother, but wasn't satisfied with these explanations.

The rest of the short plays out a scene at a beach, and shows a man tying himself down to be taken by the tide as a boy and his mother discuss an old story she used to tell him—leading to more frustration for the main character. Throw in an odd sexual encounter with the mother and the climactic death of the man on the beach, and you have the beginnings of a filmmaking talent whose career knows no bounds.

Japan (Japón), released in 2002 and screened at the Walker in 2003, won the Golden Camera Special Distinction at the Cannes Film Festival. The film, shot in grainy 16 mm, highlights many of Reygadas's strengths: shooting landscapes — it is shot in cinemascope (he got the idea from Gaspar Noe's I Stand Alone, the first film Reygadas saw shot with 16 mm in scope) with an anamorphic lens, squeezing the image and showing off the beautiful Mexican countryside and rolling mountains; his insistence to work only with non-actors and his ability to pull natural, realistic performances from them; big, biblical themes that ruminate in nearly every scene, but are culled from the minutia of everyday people living fairly simple lives; long takes that pull the viewer into the reality of the characters; little use of score, mainly using ambient sounds or diegetic music for the soundtrack; graphic sexual encounters featuring actors not typically seen in films having sex (i.e. old, unattractive, and fat people); focus on characters over story, and characters full of contradictions. All of his films feature extremely memorable opening and closing shots that resonate in the mind of the viewer and are inescapable from memory.

In Japan and his other two features, its obvious Reygadas has a fondness for his actors, and their characters in the film. But he also has deep respect for the audience, and isn't the least bit pretentious. He uses his films to speak truths about the human condition and reveal his philosophy on life, but never speaks down to the audience, instead choosing to show the action and let the viewers come away with their own interpretation.

Another common theme is his films' enigmatic titles. Reygadas hates titles, but realizes they're a necessary evil. He wanted to call Japan Untitled, like some of his favorite works of art, but couldn't bring himself to do it because he thought it would be "pretentious and horrible." He finished the film, concluding that it was about light coming after dark and the cycles in life, like the sun rising again. Three countries came to mind: Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. Ultimately, he thought Japan had the most significance to rising sun in the minds of an audience, so he went with that.

Japan follows a character known only as "the man" (played by Alejandro Ferretis, whose untimely death at age 59, in 2004, remains shrouded in mystery), a painter from the city looking to end his own life. He speaks bluntly. When asked in the opening why he wants a ride to a mountain he responds: "To commit suicide." When he meets a religious old woman named Ascen (Magdalena Flores) and asks to stay at her farmstead, a loving bond quickly forms. We never understand fully why the man wants to kill himself. After several unsuccessful attempts at suicide (the last one featuring a wonderful 360 degree helicopter shot on the peak of a mountain), the man finds solace in helping Ascen (her name short for Ascension, which she says is short for Christ ascending to heaven without any help) fend off family members who want to tear down her barn wall and transport it elsewhere.

A mood piece that carries a somber tone throughout the film's 128 minute running time, Japan is a promising debut feature from Reygadas, and a great film in its own right. The relationship between the man and Ascen—growing stronger after he shares a joint with Magdalena—is touching and honest, and gives the film a sense of hope that isn't there in the beginning. The man's arc is formed through his relationship with Ascen. She saves him. With its opening shot of a traffic-congested highway showing human lemmings en mass (echoing Tarkovsky's Solaris), and storyline about a city dweller finding peace in the country, Japan is a film about a man going back to nature and discovering that life is for the living.

Battle In Heaven (Batalla en el ciello) is Reygadas's controversial follow-up to his debut. The film came out in 2005 and caused quite a stir throughout its festival run. Its opening shot of a beautiful young woman named Ana (Anapola Mushkadiz) performing oral sex on an obese, older man named Marcos (Marcos Hernandez) is certainly shocking, but really only because the act isn't simulated. Those not used to seeing such things in feature films will be taken aback, but the act has meaning to the entire film. This is no gimcrack to pull in a curious audience looking for cheap thrills or beautifully shot pornography. Non-simulated sex is becoming more common in films these days. Two prominent features that spring to mind are Vincent Gallo's 2003 film The Brown Bunny (where Chloë Sevigny services Gallo's character) and John Cameron Mitchell's 2006 film Shortbus (featuring all manner of gay, straight, bi, and orgy non-simulated sexual encounters).

From the opening shot, the audience is thrown into Marcos's point of view. He is confused, guilt-ridden, and not the most loquacious of characters. He seems to be numb to life, walking through his days with cold distance to all that surrounds him. Again, Reygadas employs a wonderful shot high in the sky showing Mexico City's highways, the roads forming a triangular shape that shows the city's drones moving to their everyday destinations. Marcos and his wife kidnapped a child, and though we never get details or see the child on screen, we learn the child has died. Kidnapping is a huge problem in Mexico City, but unlike, say, Tony Scott's big budget, action, and testosterone-fueled revenge film Man On Fire, which uses this as a shortcut to propel its lead character (played by Denzel Washington) into a series of extremely violent vignettes, Reygadas uses this issue as a means to explore guilt.

The issue is the background, hovering over the narrative. In the foreground of Battle in Heaven is a character study about a man whose world has been thrown into a tailspin. Marcos is a middle-aged chauffer, driving his wealthy employer's daughter anywhere she pleases, but usually to the brothel she works, for no apparent reason other than pure boredom with her upper-class life. At the brothel we learn that Ana and Marcos confide in each other things they don't share with anyone else. Here we see Marcos confessing his crime to Ana. She tells Marcos to turn himself in.

Reygadas got the idea for the film when he saw a man going on a pilgrimage. The man had no shirt on, just pants and a bag over his head. He was walking toward a church, and that image inspired the film. Reygadas knew where his film was heading; he just had to find out how his characters were going get there. The climax of the film features this very image as Marcos seeks salvation for his sins. The final act of the film is haunting, leaving an impression on the viewer that will last for quite some time. Marcos commits a ghastly act of violence that puts him on this final path, setting up the climax. The few moments of violence in this film feel real, never sensationalized but still brutal.

The film's title, again very enigmatic and open to interpretation, came from a passage in the bible Reygadas read. Battle In Heaven is a powerful film that shows Reygadas's feelings about his home city. But Reygadas contends that Dostoyevsky didn't set out to explain Russia, but was interested only in his characters. His characters happened to be Russian, and because he knew his characters so well, in the end, as a byproduct, he would end up talking about Russia as well. That is what Reygadas set out to do with this film, and he achieved it. Too often the obvious and controversial aspects of the film are discussed. Yes, the sex is real onscreen, but never cloying. It is there to service the characters and narrative. Battle In Heaven is yet another step (and a beautiful film on its own) towards Reygadas's best film, Silent Light.

No better example of Reygadas's respect for his audience is more apparent than in Silent Light. He lets the film breathe, taking in the beautiful and lush Mexican landscape — the halcyon farmland, rolling hills and mountains, the tranquil blue sky — in long takes that begin on the outside looking into the subject of the frame, with the camera slowly pulling in to reveal the inside. It's a fantastic motif in the film, and it shows Reygadas's maturation behind the camera.

"Most films are too short, or too fast," Reygadas said at the Q & A following the film's screening. "I need that time to see everything I need to see in the frame."

Reygadas used almost all the footage he shot for the film. The finished film contains 200 shots, and Reygadas shot 210 total (using one camera). He creates his films on camera, not as much in the editing room. (Natalia Lopez, the director's wife, was the editor on this film.) He agrees his method for filming is "very Hitchcockian." By the time the script is done, he already has the film planned out in his head.

Reygadas claims Silent Light is a film about confusion and contradictions. It follows a family of Mennonites (again non-actors playing their fictional alter-egos) in northern Mexico's Chihuahua state, focusing on the father, named Johan (played wonderfully by Cornelio Wall Fehr), as his guilt builds because of an affair he is having with Marianne (Maria Pankratz). The characters speak in Plautdietsch, the Mennonite native language. Johan feels guilty because he wants to be a good man to his family and his wife Esther (Miriam Toews). Esther is aware of the affair, but lives with it. The film has an unforgettable climax building around a miraculous event that I won't speak a word of here, but rest assured it is magical.

Reygadas wanted archetypes for his characters—the man, the lover, the father, a wife, kids, and a friend—so that he could focus on the love story, showing how Johan has a divided heart. He truly loves both women; they both give him what he needs. The film is also about Johan's sin. This is not a religious story, though it may seem that way given the film's setting.

"This is a human story," explains Reygadas. "I just wanted him to be a good man. You don't have to be religious to feel for others. Very often it's the other way around."

Johan is conflicted throughout the film. Reygadas gives us subtle hints at his ever-growing guilt in small pieces of naturalistic dialogue — like when Johan asks his father not to mention his affair to his mother during a touching, sub rosa father-son talk. The father responds later by saying, "I wouldn't like to be in your shoes, but somehow I also envy you."

Reygadas wanted his characters to be more human than dogmatic, capable of doubt. "Doubt is a great quality that very often fundamentalists don't have," Reygadas said.

"I didn't know much about the Mennonites five years ago," said Reygadas. While shooting Battle in Heaven he took several trips to their community and developed relationships with several people. He decided this was the perfect setting for Silent Light. Mennonite law prohibits filming of their people, but Reygadas met several liberal-minded people who welcomed the idea, seeing it as a chance to preserve their culture.

Shooting in 35 mm, and employing "special lenses" from Russia used often in the '60s, Reygadas imbues every frame with a sort of visual poetry. A memorable scene where we are first introduced to Marianne takes place on a hill. Johan and Marianne kiss passionately, and as the scene goes on (in one prolonged take) lens flair appears. What Reygadas liked so much about his special lenses is he knew the flairs would be unavoidable, so he embraced them. He and cinematographer Alexis Zabe decided to use it as expression. "Most people think it is a technical mistake, but to me [the lens flairs] give something to the image."

The use of sound is nothing short of brilliant. Not a single Foley sound was used in the film. Every sound is either a direct sound recorded in the environment or directly recorded while the shot was taken. Sound recorder Raul Locatelli's work here is impressive, and it gives the film another layer of atmosphere, in no short supply in Silent Light, a film consumed by mood and tone.

Reygadas thought of Sleeping Beauty and Carl Dreyer's 1955 film Ordet while making the film. Dreyer is a huge influence on Reygadas. But he is no mere epigone. He is a unique voice in film. Like all filmmakers, other filmmakers and artists influence him. (When I saw Silent Light I immediately thought of Terrence Malick's The New World and Days of Heaven, a comparison Reygadas disagrees with.)

"A lot of people talk about [Malick] regarding this film, maybe because he also shoots the countryside calmly. There's too much action in his films. Too much going on. I appreciate his films, I'm just not keen on them." When asked if Malick was an influence for the film, he responded, "Uhh.... No, not really.... Uh.... I actually.... Yeah, no."

Reygadas believes that good films are better the more they are watched. He enjoys finding those new, little nuances in them. These are the kind of films he wants to make, and so far he has accomplished this in all three films. Japon, Battle in Heaven, and his masterpiece (for now) Silent Light are films that stay with the viewer, rewarding on subsequent viewings. He believes film is much closer to music or painting (than literature), where the art is not there to tell a story but rather to give a feeling. The opening and closing scenes in Silent Light would be written: the sun came up; the sun went down. In the film we are given something truly cinematic. The image is there to be taken in by the viewer, and what an image it is.

"Rather than taking the spectator vicariously through someone else's experience and coming out of the cinema thinking, 'What a beautiful dream, I forgot about life for two hours and now I'm back in my miserable life,'" says Reygadas, "I'd rather respect the spectator and realize a good spectator comes to the cinema to live, not to forget. That's living, feeling emotion. That's why I make films."

EXTRA: Straight Talk with Dean Otto

Dean Otto is the Assistant Curator of Film/Video at the Walker Art Center. I spoke with him briefly about the work put into obtaining Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light for its Minnesota premiere, and his feelings on this talented and important filmmaker's work.

The Rake: How were you able to get this film at the Walker? What was the process, and how difficult was it to obtain, as I know it doesn't have a distributor and hasn't had an official theatrical release?

Dean Otto: We've been working with Carlos and the French sales agent who has the worldwide rights to the film for several months to find a date that a print was available and that worked for his travel schedule. In the meantime, the U.S. rights were purchased by Tartan, but they didn't have a print by the time of our screening. We had to use a print from the Canadian distributor Seville to make the program possible.

The Rake: How were you able to get Reygadas to show up for the Q & A?

DO: Carlos had known the Walker through former Film/Video Curator Cis Bierinckx and had been interested in traveling here to present his films. As we were launching our ongoing Cinemateca series we followed up to invite him here to present Silent Light, which premiered at Cannes last year.

The Rake: How did you discover his work?

DO: Carlos' work first was discovered by former Walker Film/Video curator Cis Bierinckx who programmed the film JAPON at the Walker in 2003 after seeing the film at the Rotterdam Film Festival. Since then, we've followed his film and career.

The Rake: Are you a fan of Reygadas' work?

DO: I am a big fan of his work.

The Rake: What is your favorite film of his?

DO: For me, Silent Light is the film that I appreciate the most for its bold visual style.

The Rake: What was your mission in bringing this film to Minneapolis?

DO: We value following filmmakers over the course of their career and we wanted to highlight this striking film from Mexico as part of our Cinemateca series which features films from Latin America.