Silence fills the screen as a black and white frame of Anna, a novice nun, painting a statue of Jesus Christ takes over. Soon, she and her fellow nuns carry the finished statue through inches of deep snow and plant it in the field in front of their convent. Not a single sound is heard other than the whispering of a cold, winter morning.
The first few minutes of the film are compulsively still and quite different from your run-of-the-mill American film. There are no cinematic distractions per se that overpower your attention. Sometimes there is utter silence. Sometimes it’s just the sounds of spoons clinking against the china as the nuns indulge in a silent convent dinner. Sometimes it is just simple country sounds – chickens pecking, pebbles running, people working.
After minutes of silence and mundane movements, we shift to Mother Superior’s office where we learn, just as Anna does, that she has an aunt, Wanda Gruz, who is her only living relative. Mother Superior informs her of this and advises Anna to meet her once before taking her final vows. Anna, who has never stepped foot outside the convent, begins her journey to Lodz, Poland to locate her aunt.
