Time Out London’s interview with Silent Light director Carlos Reygadas is full of good stuff, but like Ray Pride, I’m most interested in what he has to say about the formulation of the film’s almost incomprehensibly beautiful opening shot. It turns out that its inspiration was surprisingly mundane–just take one part OS X, add one part Icelandic art band, and stir:

I was listening to Sigur Rós before going to bed, the computer was in front of me, and the screensaver came on. I have this cosmic screensaver, a picture of stars moving out of the frame very, very slowly. I looked at that magnificent space landscape with the music of Sigur Rós playing and I thought the movie had to open like that.

After all the breathless sploogery over this scene (my own included), its actual ingredients are kind of a letdown, no?

In any case, as my romance with this movie continues unabated, I was happy to see Anne Thompson name it as a “strong contender” for an Oscar nom. Also, how did I miss the news (now a month old!) that Tartan is distributing the film in the US? (Maybe I was derelict in my feed reading duties that week; maybe one of you should have told me. But let’s not play the blame game, okay?) This should be good news, but with no US release date yet set (it opens in England on Friday), I have to guess they’re waiting for the Oscar nominations to decide how and when to push it out.

Amongst the small cadre of film bloggers and critics that have been filing dispatches from the New York Film Festival’s press screenings for the past three weeks, Stellet Licht (Silent Light) seems to be the surprise hit of the festival. I wrote a glowing review last week; with the film’s second and final public screening coming up this evening, after the jump you’ll find a round-up of what people are saying about Carlos Reygada’s mesmerizing Mexican Mennonite drama. If you’re in town, I urge you check it out–I’m pretty sure it’s the best undistributed film I’ve seen all year.

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