Starring: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Liam Neeson
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Runtime: 161 mins. Reviewed in Jan 2017
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This American film is an historical drama based on a 1966 Japanese novel of the same name by Shusaku Endo. The story is set in Nagasaki, Japan, and follows two Jesuit Priests in the 17th Century, who journey from Portugal to Japan in 1633 in search of their missing mentor. The movie was chosen by the American Film Institute as one of the top ten films of 2016.
Scorsese once wanted to become a Catholic Priest, and his intellectual doubts about the nature of belief in God feature strongly in this film. The viewer is challenged to look for a good God in an awful world. Scorsese is well known for intense brutality, shown compellingly in movies like “Mean Streets” (1973), “Raging Bull” (1980), and “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988). In this film, theology, brutality and violence go hand in hand.
Fr Sebastiao Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Fr Francisco Garrpe (Adam Driver) are trying to find Fr Christovao Ferreira (Liam Neeson), who desecrated an image of Christ after being tortured by the Japanese. Refusing to step on a religious image is met by torture, and death by drowning, beheading, or burning. The two Priests are committed fervently to spreading The Word of God and are travelling at a time when Christianity in Japan was outlawed and strictly forbidden. It was a time when Faith in God was sorely tested, and they don’t know what to expect.
The film begins with a terribly-delivered martyrdom of a group of Catholic Priests, which sets a context for what follows, and relentlessly builds up dread. Its images, though beautifully photographed, are almost too much to endure. Fr Rodrigues is captured and subjected to extreme mental torture. He is locked in a wooden cage and forced to watch and hear the suffering and cries of Christians being tortured and killed outside his cage. He is told that their suffering will cease if he renounces God by desecrating a Christian image, and he is plagued by doubts that God might want him to stop the suffering of others by doing so. In this movie, Scorsese uses suffering in all its forms, mental and physical, to stimulate viewers’ thoughts and emotions.
The film forces the viewer to consider complex questions. How much agony can be endured before faith will be renounced, and does that signify a true and personal rejection of God? How much does God really want human beings to suffer, and is knowing His Love enough for us to cope? The movie doesn’t answer these questions. It poses the issues to challenge the viewer.
Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield, and Adam Driver are all impressive as the Priests – two commit apostasy and deny God, and cannot comprehend a God that forces others to suffer so much; and the third is killed. Yosuke Kubozuka plays a weak villager, who helps the Priests, but betrays them as well. Issey Ogata acts the Inquisitor who colours his rhetoric frighteningly with specious spirituality. God’s Grace is also highlighted by Scorsese. For Scorsese, it influences what people choose to do – those who suffer and don’t recant, those who recant, and those who cause the pain.
This is highly original film-making from a master craftsman. Scorsese does what he can to make the viewer uncomfortable, and succeeds in doing so. It is made for very serious movie-going.
In a savage way, the film searches to find meaning in the apparent contradictions of Faith. At its core, it examines perceptions of Faith and offers a test of it at one and the same time. The message that Scorsese gives in this film is that the “Silence” of God does not mean that God has deserted humankind. Rather, God shares human suffering with us in a world that is characterised by terrible brutality. That final message is uplifting, but Scorsese’s journey to it is hard to watch. This is a film that is unquestionably unsettling and confronting, but also powerful cinema.
12 Random Films…
