Silence

Directed by Martin Scorsese, United States, 2016

The 1966 novel Silence, written by Shusaku Endo, is set in 17th century feudal Japan. After the Shimabara Rebellion, a thousands-strong uprising of mostly Catholic peasants against the ruling Tokugawa shogunate, the Emperor outlawed all Christianity from the country. Remaining Kakure Kirishitan ("Hidden Christians") were discovered by Japanese authorities by forcing them to step on the fumie, plaques with carved images of Christ and Mary. Those who refused were tortured or killed. In Endo's novel, two Portuguese Jesuits sneak into the country despite the danger, to spread their gospel and to track down their old mentor, Padre Ferreira, who is rumored to have apostatized under torture. Shusaku Endo had a unique perspective on his novel's subject matter. He was a Japanese Roman Catholic, a religious minority in his home country who experienced persecution for his beliefs, particularly during the imperial years of his youth. When studying abroad in France in the 1950s, he experienced racial hatred and the lack of understanding between West and East. His experiences must have granted him a rare, empathetic perspective on this time and place in history, as his Silence illuminates the sincere faith of the Jesuit priests while exposing their destructive colonial hubris.

Silence had been adapted onto film once before, in 1971 by filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda, but Endo reportedly disliked it, believing it misrepresented his story. Of course I would have no way of actually knowing, but I suspect he would approve of Martin Scorsese's new adaptation. Martin Scorsese has desired to adapt the book for decades, and his passion for the material shows clearly in the finished film. Even more importantly, he understands the book's multitudinous meanings, and has translated them from prose to cinema with powerful emotional and intellectual clarity.

Scorsese also wrote a foreword to a recent reprinting of Silence. He begins by asking, "How do you tell the story of Christian faith?" If his film can be taken as a reply to his own question (though certainly nothing like a definitive answer), you can tell the story of faith by stripping away everything else. And that is exactly what happens to the protagonist of Silence, Padre Rodrigues. With as much witty, unsparing ruthlessness as the Japanese Inquisitors, though with far more compassionate intent, Silence breaks down Rodrigues's assumptions, the things he clings to as truth but which are actually more related to cultural perceptions, his church's laws, and his own ego than any immutable truth. Once these things are painfully taken from Rodrigues, what is left?

These are only my first impression thoughts. I suspect this is the kind of film that will reveal something else on my second and third viewings. The story is dramatically straightforward and easy to follow, but its implications are startlingly dense, and lead to a multitude of moral, historical, and religious interpretations. Silence has the power to challenge and productively unsettle anyone who open themselves to its line of questioning, no matter their beliefs or ethnicity.

On first look, the visceral qualities and vibrant humanity of Silence resonate with me even more than any one interpretation of "what it means". The production values are phenomenal - it is a detailed and immersive recreation of Edo-period Japan, brought to life with beautiful cinematography. Scorsese's camera pays particular attention to hands and faces, to foggy landscapes and symmetrical Japanese architecture. His filmmaking recalls many of classic cinema's greats, from Japanese masters like Kenji Mizoguchi and Akira Kurosawa to European transcendentalist filmmakers like Carl Dreyer and Roberto Rossellini, but it remains very much a singular, personal vision.

The characters are unforgettable. Padre Rodrigues is an immensely complex character and Andrew Garfield is up to the challenge, charting out Rodrigues's turbulent psychological journey from beginning to end with piercing emotional truth. Rodrigues vacillates between steadfast faith and crippling angry doubt, cowardice and bravado, selfless love and arrogance, and Garfield shows us how all these various attributes belong to one personality, while making Rodrigues's core sincerity and goodness clear enough that we, as viewers, are never allowed to feel superior despite his faults. Even with a distracting half-assed Portuguese accent (I don't understand - if they're speaking English and not Portuguese, why bother?), it's a tremendous performance.

The entire cast impresses. Adam Driver gets less screen time than expected as Padre Garrpe, but has a striking presence as always. His unique facial features look especially gaunt and severe here, like a stern religious icon brought to life. The normally intimidating Liam Neeson looks deflated, his Padre Ferreira is a defeated and spiritually crippled man - though fascinating, subtle notes in his performance suggest that may not be the whole truth. Shinya Tsukamato radiates courage as Mokichi, a Kirishitan martyr. His faith is not only hope in the afterlife, but an assertion of his own value in the face of a feudal system that denies him dignity - the sequence where he is strung up on a cross in the surf, quietly singing a hymn even as the waves relentlessly beat his body, is at once horrific and beautiful. Tadanobu Asano compels as the Japanese authorities' interpreter to Rodrigues, a jovial sadist who is fascinated and disgusted by the proud Rodrigues, and knows the exact words to undercut the priest's sense of superiority. Issey Ogata's performance as Inquisitor Inoue might be the most unexpected, in part because it's unrecognizably different from the only other Ogata performance I've seen, as the businessman in Edward Yang's Yi Yi who is a paragon of kindness and joy. In Silence Ogata is joltingly bizarre and comic - his Inoue uses flamboyantly pronounced courtly manners to disarm Rodrigues before dismantling his pride with wicked wit and insight.

But the most affecting character in Silence might be Kichijiro, played by Yosuke Kubozuka. In addition to acting, Kubozaka sometimes models for advertisements and fashion magazines in Japan, but his role as Kichijiro is about as unflattering and unglamorous as they come. Kichijiro is a filthy, bumbling alcoholic, cowardly and dedicated to self-preservation at all costs. His unending cycle of panicky betrayal followed by scrounging repentance grows increasingly absurd - but is also fundamentally human. Like J.R.R. Tolkien's Gollum, Kichijiro is a fascinating tragicomic creation whose weakness and naked desires reveal a lot of uncomfortable but truthful things about human nature.

"Uncomfortable but truthful" is, I think, an accurate way to describe Silence. This is a great movie.