Review

Silence

Years in the making, Scorsese’s latest leaves prayers unanswered

Inquisitor Inoue Masashige (Issei Ogata) sees it as his duty to discover and drive “Kirishitans” out of 17th-century Japan in Martin Scorsese’s Silence.
Inquisitor Inoue Masashige (Issei Ogata) sees it as his duty to discover and drive “Kirishitans” out of 17th-century Japan in Martin Scorsese’s Silence.

Martin Scorsese's Silence is a story of faith and anguish. It tells of a Portuguese Jesuit priest, Father Rodrigues, who in 1643 heads into the dark heart of Japan, where Christians are being persecuted -- boiled alive, immolated and crucified. Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) sets out to help keep the church alive in Japan. Scorsese's work has long involved struggles of faith of one kind or another. In Silence the struggle begins in a mist-wreathed landscape where severed human heads rest on a crude shelf, like trophies of some ghastly victory.

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Fathers Garupe (Adam Driver) and Rodrigues (Andrew Garfi eld) are Portuguese Catholic priests looking to propagate their religion and fi nd their missing mentor in Martin Scorsese’s Silence.

Figures soon emerge from the mist, notably Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), who, as gaunt and tormented as any martyred Caravaggio saint, watches in gaping horror as guards ladle water from hot springs on shrieking Christians. Rodrigues learns about this hellish scene from Father Valignano (Ciaran Hinds), who also relates that Ferreira has renounced his religion and is living as "a Japanese." Rodrigues, having studied with Ferreira, refuses to accept that the older priest's belief has been shattered and departs for Japan accompanied by another priest, Father Garupe (a fine, underused Adam Driver), and a Japanese guide, Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozuka, excellent).

Silence

86 Cast: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Liam Neeson, Tadanobu Asano, Ciaran Hinds, Issei Ogata, Yosuke Kubozuka

Director: Martin Scorsese

Rating: R, for some disturbing violent content

Running time: 2 hours, 41 minutes

The movie's early scenes are filled with severe pictorial beauty as the pale thermal steam snaking around the martyred Christians gives way to the vaulted white room where the black-clothed Jesuits meet. The chromatic contrast between the inkiness of their cassocks and the room's ascetic whiteness finds an echo in Rodrigues' rigid dualism, a belief in absolutes that will be tested.

Whether this represents God's vision or that of the priests, it is very much the point of view of the movie's own creator. This overhead shot and others suggest that there's a divine aspect to the priests' mission, an idea that Scorsese visually and narratively underlines in the Lazarus-like cave in which Rodrigues and Garupe first take shelter in Japan; in Rodrigues' self-aggrandizing identification with Jesus; and, crucially, through the figure of Judas. As in Scorsese's 1988 film, The Last Temptation of Christ, Judas must play a part in Silence because without him there can be no Jesus.

Once in Japan, Rodrigues and Garupe make contact with a village of hidden Christians, who live in fear of the authorities and a cobralike smiler known as the Inquisitor, Inoue (Issei Ogata, in one of the film's strongest performances). By day, the priests hide in a small, cramped hut near the village; by night, they lead their new flock in dimly lighted rooms, delivering sermons in Latin, baptizing children and taking confession.

There's something uncomfortably and literally childlike about this child of God who, like the other villagers, with their pleading eyes and hands, seems like a relic from a white-savior myth.

Silence is based on the 1966 novel by the Japanese author Shusaku Endo that has attracted heavyweight admirers since it was first published. What preoccupies Endo is whether Western Christianity can take root in what the Inquisitor describes as "this swamp of Japan," which seems inhospitable to outside forces. It's a story of God, nation and myth.

It's easy to understand Scorsese's interest in the novel and specifically in the character of Rodrigues. Despite the priest's piety, black vestments and narrative prominence, he is no more a Hollywood hero than most of Scorsese's falling and fallen men, with their arrogance and vanity. Rodrigues cowers in fear, recoils from his flock and assures himself of the goodness that the church -- and he, by extension -- has brought. His faith, including in himself, sustains Rodrigues, but even as he tends to the souls of the hidden Christians he fails to ease their earthly suffering. God is silent; in a way, so is this most ardent missionary.

The silence of the title resounds insistently; it's in the screams of the faithful and in Rodrigues' endless searching. Why, he agonizes with no self-awareness, does God not answer prayers and alleviate suffering, a question which proves too heavy a load for Garfield's talents.

Silence argues against orthodoxy, but its messenger is pallid. Scorsese fills the film with haunting tableaus and performances that tug from the edges, pulling attention away from its center.

Silence is as visually striking as you might expect, but also overly tidy, clean and decorous, despite its tortured flesh, its mud and its blood. There's a crushing lack of urgency to this story and its telling. It's disappointing because few directors can engage doubt and belief as powerfully as Scorsese can, but also because doubt and belief have again set the world on fire.

MovieStyle on 01/20/2017

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