It’s unclear if Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi was inspired by the seminal 1979 Stevie Wonder album, Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants , for her latest enigmatic feature, Silent Friend . But she not only could have used its title as an alternative to her own — she manages to capture the music’s trippy and soothing spirit, as well as its sense of experimentation, in a movie that gradually washes over you like a warm natural fragrance.

That doesn’t mean this two-and-a-half-hour arthouse triptych about man, nature, botany and brainwaves is easy to sit through, especially if you’re looking for a conventional story, or perhaps any story at all. But Enyedi is a master stylist who knows how to create a certain mood, mixing visual poetry with deadpan humor, and big ideas with quoti

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