Review: Silence

Based on Shūsaku Endō's 1966 novel, Martin Scorsese's long-gestating passion project Silence is by no means the director's definitive masterpiece, but it is a profound and rigorous meditation on faith and the continual struggle to maintain it against all odds.

Recalling Robert Bresson, Carl Theodor Dreyer and Ingmar Bergman in its classicism, epic intimacy and almost severe restraint, Silence begins Father Cristóvão Ferreira (Liam Neeson) witnessing his fellow priests being tortured by the Japanese. The purpose of the torture, which entails boiling water slowly dripped upon the priests' exposed flesh, is to force the men of the cloth to apostasise, renounce their faith by stepping on a stone with the image of Jesus. It is 1633, nearly two decades after the Japanese enacted the Edict of Expulsion in order to ban and eradicate Christianity from its lands.

The mystery of whether Ferreira renounced or died in protest to demonstrate the power of his faith is the catalyst for the main narrative. Two young Portuguese Jesuit priests, Fathers Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver), both pupils of Ferreira's teachings, set off to discover the truth, smuggled into the Japanese village of Tomogi by alcoholic fisherman Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozuka). There the two are overwhelmed with the Kakure Kirishitan, Christians who have been hiding their faith and who are eager to finally receive sacraments. Garupe marvels at the depths of their devotion, wondering how they can endure so much suffering and why such suffering must even exist for the faithful.

Indeed, the suffering is almost unbelievable in its cruelty. Women are wrapped into straw mats and set ablaze or thrown overboard into the waters, people hung upside down inside a pit as blood slowly trickles from an incision in their neck, and, in one of the film's most visceral moments, strapped onto crosses as they're slowly pummeled by the waves. And yet they will not deny their faith. If the villagers' suffering is physical, Rodrigues' is emotional. He's prepared for martyrdom, even welcoming the chance to follow in Jesus' footsteps, but wholly unprepared for the diabolical methods of the Japanese, who threaten to inflict punishment upon the villagers until Rodrigues and Garupe apostatise.

Through it all, he appeals to God for guidance and is met with resounding silence. Yet is it his faith or his arrogance that compels his suffering? Garfield underwent a similar crisis of faith in Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge, where his Desmond Doss was ostracised for his refusal to bear arms during combat in WWII because it went against his religion, but his performance here conveys a more complex piety. In many respects, one could look upon this as Scorsese's rendering of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness with Ferreira as Mr. Kurtz and Rodrigues as Marlow grappling with the darkness of the human condition and the horror...the horror of his own seeming weakness in the face of the villagers' and his fellow priests' fortitude.

Technically, Silence is a gorgeous work. Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto captures the harsh beauty of the landscape (the film was shot in Taiwan) and imbues the interior scenes with painterly hues. Scorsese's longtime editor, the phenomenal Thelma Schoonmaker, provides the film with its elegiac and exquisitely patient rhythm. That rhythm may prove too deliberate for viewers more used to Scorsese's virtuosic razzle-dazzle, but those willing to stay the course will be rewarded as the film has an almost surprising resonance. Starkly eloquent and never less than commanding, Silence may be the apotheosis for Scorsese's evocations of religion in his filmography.

Silence

Directed by: Martin Scorsese

Written by: Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese; based on the novel by Shūsaku Endō

Starring: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Liam Neeson, Tadanobu Asano, Ciarán Hinds, Shinya Tsukamoto, Yosuke Kubozuka, Issey Ogata