Silence (2016)

Nearly 30 years after The Last Temptation of Christ, Martin Scorsese returns with another religious epic – the magnificent, heartrending, humanist Silence. Of course, nearly every film Scorsese made in the intervening years dealt with faith, guilt, and redemption, but you can’t help but feel that these two films, which place the subtextual concerns front and center, are perhaps the most crucial of the director’s career. Silence is staggeringly, almost painfully wrought with emotion and pain, fully shaped by the filmmaker’s vulnerabilities, hopes, and fears.

Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver, both excellent, star as Rodrigues and Garupe, idealistic Portuguese missionaries who venture to the mysterious shores of Japan in the 17th century to spread the word of Christianity despite violent persecution. Additionally, and perhaps of even greater importance to the priests, they hope to locate Ferreria (Liam Neeson), a mentor to them who disappeared in Japan amidst rumors that he renounced his faith. Their desperate, possibly doomed, search for Ferreira has an Apocalypse Now vibe. Rodrigues and Garupe meet many Japanese Christians (forced to worship in secrecy) who are overjoyed to have genuine priests in their presence, but the priests operate under a constant threat of danger.

Some will have difficulty getting past certain rather major components of Silence. It is nearly 3 hours long (many critics labeled it boring and laborious). Scorsese eschews his usual, irresistible stylistic touches. The lead roles have been whitewashed. And, perhaps most unforgivably to some arthouse intellectuals, it has a generally sympathetic view of devoted religious faith. Silence’s antagonists are Japanese Buddhists and its protagonists are missionaries of a religion infamous for its own brutal persecutions (amongst other horrors).

It’s important to dispense with the concept of protagonists and antagonists here, though. Silence is not an Us. vs. Them story, it’s a tale of life’s inscrutable uncertainties, following fallible characters attempting to navigate their way through confusion, crisis, and chaos. Simply put, regardless of your personal stance on religion, it’s exciting to watch any director make a film that is so important to them, with material that they have so deeply internalized.

Scorsese, working from a stunning script he co-wrote with Jay Cocks, is certainly not arguing the value of one religion over another. Silence patiently and intelligently explores the affect faith has on a person: What does it mean to have genuine faith? What is a person willing to sacrifice for those beliefs? Would they give up the life of a fellow man if they thought it was God’s will? How does one deal with doubt in the face of suffering, when confronted with secular logic, or just in spite of the harsh realities of corporeal existence? Silence is preoccupied with moral clusterfucks, and it pursues them with a dogged and unflinching insistence rarely seen in non-documentary filmmaking.

I should add, almost as an afterthought in comparison to Silence’s thematic weight and raw emotionality, that it is a spectacularly crafted film. The cinematography from Rodrigo Pietro is gorgeous, capturing Japan’s majestic beauty (well, it was filmed in Taiwan, but still), as well as an unyielding power that only serves to emphasize the utter futility of the human struggle. The performances are all excellent, with actor/comedian Issei Ogata standing out as a curiously eccentric and frighteningly determined governor dedicated to purging Japan of Christianity. Although the narrative is deliberate and unhurried, the film’s impact is visceral – Silence is sweeping, stirring, absolutely moving.