Into Great Silence (U) <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Endurance-test minimalism. Director Philip Gröning spent five months inside the Grande Chartreuse, mother house of the Carthusian Order in the French Alps, and from 120 hours of film he pieced together this near-silent documentary about the life of the monks and their ascetic rituals of devotion. For minutes (or was it hours?) at a time the only sounds heard might be birdsong, the page of a prayerbook being turned, or a monk chopping vegetables.

On the one hand, some of Gröning's images have the tranquil domestic beauty of a Vermeer painting, and in the absolute stillness there is a kind of rebuke to the modern babble of 21st-century life - no chirruping mobile phones here, or the moronic drone of their users. On the other, and in a spirit of contrition, I must admit to glazing over for long stretches. I'm sure the life of austerity has its rewards, but on this evidence cinema is not one of the beneficiaries.