How a film about monks has become a surprise arthouse hit

High in the French Alps, the sombre toll of a bell echoes across the snow. Hooded figures scurry silently through medieval passageways, their pale capes billowing behind. The only human sound inside the Grande Chartreuse, a 17th-century monastery, is the rustle of clothing and footfalls on the stone floor. Wordless prayer is conducted in solitary cells, with just a small fire for warmth. The monastery is home to a Carthusian order of ascetic and largely silent Catholic monks.

The German film director Philip Groening spent time living with the monks and filmed a way of life that has barely changed for 1,000 years. The result, Into Great Silence, is two hours and 40 minutes long, without music or narration. It contains only a few minutes of dialogue and chanting.

When negotiating with film distributors to have his film shown in Britain, Groening was told there would be little space for it. It was beautiful and original, but audiences would not cope with something that required a level of discipline not dissimilar to that shown by the film's subjects. Without drama or obvious narrative, it becomes like a meditation. "I wanted to make a film that became a monastery, rather than depict one. I wanted the audience to experience how time slows down and how that effects their state of mind," he says.

Critics confessed their boredom and gave it an average two stars. The film was booked for limited screenings at a few independent cinemas across the country - after which its life on British screens was expected to be over. Then, the telephones started to ring. The film's UK distributor and cinemas such as London's ICA were contacted daily by members of the public inquiring where they could see the film about the monks.

"The amount of calls we received was entirely unexpected. We were contacted by all kinds of people," says Kate Gerova of Soda pictures. The ICA responded by rebooking the film for an extra two weeks. It was the same story in Birmingham and Liverpool, and is showing in mainstream cinemas across Italy, France and Germany.

"I'm not sure why this has happened," says Groening. "My hope is that it brings the audience to their own inner space. The monastery is a place where you encounter yourself. People have told me how they unexpectedly started to cry as they watched."

Anne Veal, 69, recently watched the film. She says: "I was deeply touched by the simplicity and sincerity of the monks' relationships. They may rarely speak but the way they were with one another was genuinely caring. I loved watching them playing in the snow, which was something I didn't expect. I felt privileged to have seen this."

Groening's patience with his project has bordered on the divine. He first asked to film inside the Grande Chartreuse in 1984. Nineteen years later, the General Prior agreed - so long as Groening didn't use artificial light or bring an assistant. The film-maker moved in for six months. Editing took two and a half years. Within the film, there is a subtle narrative in the order of events - spring breaks through the melting snow, a new monk is admitted, vegetables are planted, and an elderly blind monk breathes his last breath as snow starts to fall again.

Groening balances this cycle with moments of acute observation: light falls on a bowl of fruit, dust dances in the sunlight. Up in the sky the jetstream from an aircraft makes the sign of a cross, a reminder that a way of life so removed from our own continues as we watch.

More than anything the film is about how we look, how, when given time, we are able to see differently. It is these quiet moments of beauty found in the quotidian mundane that Groening is most proud of. "I could not have found the image of the bowl of fruit when I first arrived. I had to wait. There was a change as my perception of the present moment helped me to see more. My level of awareness became different.

"Monks don't share our sense of time, and once this is realised, once you come into the present, your time is given back," he says. This shows in the unhurried and thorough manner with which monks approach their daily tasks. Vegetables are chopped with precision. A young monk cares for his sick elder brother with an attentiveness that's quite moving.

There is a contradiction in their lives. For the most part their existence is solitary, save for a weekly walk during which they are encouraged to talk. Yet in their solitude, there is a profound intimacy in the routines and rituals they share, their faith - and the decision they have made to join the monastery.

Groening doesn't interview the monks. Instead, they confront the camera close up for a few moments so that we can see who they are and wonder why they are there. To give us an insight into their minds, quotes from the Bible are flashed up: "Anyone who does not give up all he has cannot be my disciple", and, "O Lord you have seduced me and I was seduced". The substance of the text explains the attitude essential to a Carthusian way of life - the faith they have in their decision must be complete and unwavering.

Groening believes that cinema is the ideal medium in which to experience a true sense of the monastic life. He says: "The miracle of film is that it can bring the viewer along. In a film that in its deepest sense is about time, it is the perfect medium." For him it was essential for the film to be silent. It may take saintly patience to watch but this is the point. As the monks say: "Only in complete silence, one starts to hear. Only when language resigns, one starts to see."

Into Great Silence will be released on DVD by Soda Pictures next week