Silence

Dir: Martin Scorsese

2017

****

Martin Scorsese's Silence has been in development hell since 1990 and while I really liked it, I can't help but think the 1990 version would have been better. I love Martin Scorsese's work but I don't think he has been on top form for the last few years. I enjoyed 2013's The Wolf of Wall Street but I haven't been that bothered with his work before then, since maybe 1999's Bringing out the Dead, although 1995's Casino feels like Scorsese's last proper Scorsese film. Silence was originally set to star Daniel Day-Lewis, Benicio del Toro and Gael Garcia Bernal but I don't think loosing the big names harmed it any, quite the opposite in fact. Andrew Garfield is superb as Father Sebastiao Rodrigues and Adam Driver is brilliant as Father Francisco Garupre. I can't think of many actors who could have played Father Cristovao Ferreira, Daniel Day-Lewis would have been great I'm sure but Liam Neeson was good in what really wasn't a major role. Garfield leads the film effortlessly but for me Tadanobu Asano (as the interpreter to Japan's Inquisitor) and Shinya Tsukamoto as Mokichi (a villager practicing Christianity in secret) steal every scene they are in, indeed, I think the Japanese actors have been largely overlooked here even though they give the best performances. It's a fine looking film, not as visually epic as I thought it would be but then the budget restraints the film had are now famous and possibly had an effect on this, don't get me wrong, it's beautiful film but I couldn't help but think it wasn't as grand as Roland Joffe's The Mission (the most obvious comparison) or 2015's Embrace of the Serpent. Scorsese seemed to be imitating two of his film-making heroes; Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu. It's a wonderful tribute to the two masters of cinema who have influenced pretty much every film made since their classics but I just didn't feel it was Scorsese enough. The Last Temptation of Christ was Scorsese, I think I wanted something along the same lines, although that said, there were certain scenes that almost looked lifted from his earlier film, which I found a little annoying as they weren't done as well. Visuals aren't always everything though, and even though it may sound as if I'm being overly critical, I just thought that after all the issues in development and the low budget, Scorsese would have knocked our socks off and shown everyone how a master does it. However, Silence is first and foremost - and most importantly - an adaption of Shūsaku Endō's 1966 novel. Endō's beautifully written story is a morally ambiguous look at religion from the viewpoint of a Japanese Catholic. Endō, like many other Japanese Catholics, was the victim of religious discrimination in Japan and also suffered racism when he lived in France during the 1950s. He used both (and a debilitating bout of tuberculosis which resulted in the removal of one of his lungs) as a fuel for his fire. The attitude and insults the two Priests receive in the story are almost word for word the same as Endō received throughout his working life as an author. It is a Christian film at its core but it is also extremely balanced and rather poignant in this day and age. The story covers the differences in history and culture as well as belief and social attitude. You can compare it to so much that is happening today and that has happened before and after the book was written and the time when the story was set in the 1630s. I'm a live-and-let-live atheist but there was plenty for me to take home. The Church's global missions caused huge problems, many that you could say still remain today. The film is unexpectedly critical and brutally honest of the mix of culture and belief, which gives the story a lot of weight. God may, or may not be real but persecution certainly exists and a silence remains. I would argue that the non-religious can and should watch the film as it isn't as much about the divine as you may think, it really is a film about human nature. It's a thought-provoking exploration, I found the issue of martyrdom particularly interesting, even though I found a lot of the content to be flawed. It's one of those films that highlights the intolerance of man, the great and bad that men do and a great essay on the fact that man will never totally agree with each other, which is something we can all agree on. Tremendous but with niggles.