SILENCE (2016)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Paramount, 161 minutes, R (violent
images)
★★★★★
If
I told you that a really long, slow, and frequently gruesome movie about 17th
century Portuguese missionaries to Japan might be the best film you’ll see all
year, would you believe me? You should.
Silence joins The Last
Temptation of Christ and Kundun to
complete Martin Scorsese’s trilogy about faith, the need for tolerance, and the
limits of the latter. It’s the movie he’s wanted to make his whole life, or at
least since 1990, when he first tried to bring Shūsaku Endō’s novel to the
screen. Scorsese, like many Roman Catholics in a secular age, has long
struggled with church doctrines fashioned in the Middle Ages that make sweeping
demands on believers, but are often rooted more in custom, archaic power
structures, and the arcane reasoning of theological tribunals than in Biblical
commands or the needs of followers. Scorsese also ponders deeper eschatological
mysteries: life’s meaning, eternity, and the nature of God. He concludes that
faith and reason are often incompatible lovers.
This
is especially the case when it comes to God. One of the greatest conundrums is
whether God hears our prayers. If so, why does it often seem as if we are alone
in the universe? If you think about it, all organized religions are rooted in a
monstrous conceit. Each poses an omnipotent, ineffable god yet insists that
theirs is the only true deity—as if somehow they alone among finite beings
comprehend the infinite.
In
Silence, Fathers Rodrigues (Andrew
Garfield) and Garupe (Adam Driver) add another layer of irony. Their
self-claimed task is to smuggle themselves into Japan, minister to the scattered
faithful, and find Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), one of the few priests not
reported killed in the wake of the Shimbara Rebellion (1637-38), a revolt
against Tokugawa shoguns widely (and conveniently) blamed on foreigners. So our
two fathers leave Portugal, where the Inquisition remains in full force and
non-Catholics meet fates similar to those suffered by Japanese Catholics! As
they seek Father Ferreira, think a 17th century version of the
search for Dr. Livingstone meets Heart of
Darkness. They find small bands of faith-starved Christians, but also
hair-curling persecutions: burnings, drownings, beheadings, and a few tortures
not even Europeans had considered. Through it all, the question persists: Why
is God silent?
Rodrigues
and Garupe also meet a different kind of inquisitor, Inoue Masashige (Issey
Ogata). He’s like Torquemada meets Marcus Welby—calm, reasoned, and a strange
blend of mercy and unspeakable cruelty. He’s quite willing to forgive those who
apostatize by trampling on an image of Jesus—something the professed devout
believer Mokichi (Shinya Tsukamoto) does repeatedly to save his neck—and then promptly
begs priests for forgiveness. There is a scene between Rodrigues and Inoue that
is at once a masterful parry of rhetoric thrusts and a portrait of chilling
psychological terror. Again the big questions: What is the duty of the
faithful? It is easy to despise Mokichi, a Japanese mash up of Judas and Peter
in the Garden of Gethsemane, but would you renounce your faith if by doing so
you saved others? What if the cost of doing so meant that you and your flock
would be forever lost? Would you save them, or bear the guilt that you let them
perish? At what point does doubt overwhelm faith and fervor? How do you live
with yourself if you turn your back on God? And what if God speaks in the
silences, not during self-perceived acts of faith?
The
film reaches surprising conclusions that, like Inoue’s demeanor, evolve
with—mixed metaphor intended—explosive quietude. Silence is beautiful to watch and its locations (in Taiwan) are
sumptuous and Zen-like. Garfield is wonderful as a devotee torn between desire
to emulate Jesus and the fear he's not up to the task. Driver has a lesser
role, but is also superb in his battle between reason and moral impulses of
potentially disastrous consequence. Both are outdone by Tsukamoto and Ogata.
Tsukamoto's Mokichi takes his place among Uriah Heap, Gollum, Francis Urquhart,
and Peter Baelish as one of fiction's greatest obsequious, treacherous
characters. For his part, Ogata stuns. Watch how he uses his seated body to
collapse like a trapped toad, only to slowly inflate and assume a Yoda-like
counselor's position. When he does this, he is about to puff again and mete out
monstrous fates—all with a Mona Lisa smile upon wan lips.
Does
Scorsese solve the riddles of faith, tolerance, and the nature of God? Of
course not, but you will never think of such issues the same way again. They
will probably haunt you in your solitude.
Rob Weir
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