Silence is Golden

Movie Reviewed: Silence

Director: Martin Scorsese

Date: 20 July 2017

jamesintexas rating: ****



Silence is a four star film, a masterpiece of storytelling and thought, marrying some breathtakingly beautiful imagery with complex themes and characters. In 17th Century Japan, a horrific opening scene depicts brutal torturing of Catholic Portuguese missionaries as witnessed by Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson). Ferreira disappears and is thought to have turned against the faith, but in this era, communication is scant. Rumors of rumors, whisps of letters exist of Ferreira's possible apostasy. In a nod to Joseph Conrad, two young fathers Garupe (Adam Driver) and Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) embark on a mission to enter the country and locate their mentor, to find of what happened to him, and to try to save his soul in the heart of darkness, as it were.

Catholicism was banned in Japan at this time. Garupe and Rodrigues's infiltration of the country involves a drunken, troubled Japanese fisherman Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozuka) with a dark past, sects of hidden underground Christians in desperate need of ministering, and hiding during the daylight to avoid detection. The subterfuge takes a mental toll on them as they find themselves prisoners within their hiding spots, unable to enjoy the simplest pleasures. As they travel further and further inland, they put more and more Christians at risk who shelter them, feed them, and bring their babies to be baptized by them in the hopes of reaching Paradise. The two men face a crossroads and decide to separate, and the crux of the film is how each man faces his crucible in the face of astonishing adversity.

I was really stunned by this film. What happens to both characters is astonishing and heart-breaking, as well as the performances by Driver and especially Garfield are intensely memorable. Long-haired, gaunt, and hollowed-out, both are miles away from their pop culture roles as Kylo Ren and Spider-Man. They represent different aspects of faith and are punished by their chosen ways to adhere to that faith. Garfield, in particular, does some incredible wordless communicating of his character's pain and guilt in many scenes. A Japanese interlocutor Inquisitor Inoue (Issey Ogata, truly remarkable) offers a departure from Scorsese's usual hyper-kinetic bad guys like Tommy (Joe Pesci) in Goodfellas or Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis) in Gangs of New York, also penned by Kenyon College alum Jay Cocks. Deceptively introduced and slow-moving, Inquisitor Inoue carefully and deliberately stamps out the flames of Christianity as they pop up across Japan, swiftly setting moral dilemmas with vast consequences. Physically, he is no opponent, but he wields power through others. Inquisitor Inoue is more like the Warden in Shutter Island (Ted Levine) who offers this nihilistic wisdom to Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio): "There's no moral order as pure as this storm. There's no moral order at all. There's just this: can my violence conquer yours?"

Here, the statement that lingers far after the movie finishes has to do with the role of the missionary work itself: Inquisitor Inoue announces, upon heinous torturing of innocents, "The price of your glory is their suffering!" recasting missionary work as hubristic selfishness and forcing powerful questions upon the work itself and the individual. To relieve suffering is Christ-like; to sacrifice yourself, the same. How can a person stand resolute in the face of such suffering? When is refusing to break itself an act of pride? A character asks another "Do you have the right to make them suffer?"

The film takes on strange, unexpected turns, bringing in a very novelistic narrator of a Dutch sailor Dieter Albrecht observing the later events, reminding me a bit of Cloud Atlas. I found its ending to be profoundly spiritual and complex, offering readings of what faith, self-denial, and atonement can truly be. The notion of praying to silence, of hearing silence, of hearing the voice of Christ within or despite that silence is something that Scorsese has wrestled with in many of his films. His attention to the cloudiness and mistiness, the blurry divisions between land and water, the cavernous tunnels and rocky shores, and the persistent fog all seem Malickian at times in its stillness and thematically linked to deception and the unseen. There are images in Silence that I will never forget because of their horror and elemental brutality involving the sea and fire, shocking because of their rawness. With Silence (on the heels of The Wolf of Wall Street) Martin Scorsese continues to prove that he is as vital a filmmaker at age 75 as he was at any age. Silence should stand as a great cinematic spiritual exploration alongside Last Temptation of Christ and The Tree of Life. A film about 17th Century Japan has quite a bit to tell us about 21st Century America as well in its own oblique way with our nation's involvement in the complex, and some would say necessary, suffering of so many throughout the world. Scorsese leaves haunting questions behind. Is the price of our glory their suffering? And, do we have the right to make others suffer?