What was the point of it all?

Rating: 5/10 (26 March 2017)

I left half-way through. I didn't storm out, but after 1.25 hours I'd had enough. What I saw was well-done, but I kept asking myself "What was the point of all this?" The film was hugely supportive of missionising, but was the Jesuit missionising in 17C Japan a good thing? The Japanese government had a policy of keeping out all foreigners, including missionaries, but they had good reasons for doing this. As had been seen in the Americas, and was being seen in China, missionaries came hand-in-hand with commercial interests, backed up by the military. It usually didn't end well for the local people, who were usually colonised and often enslaved.
Yes, the methods used by the Japanese government were cruel, but were no crueller than what Christians were doing to each other at the time. The Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants was an ongoing bloodbath.
The missionaries were excellent marketers, skilled in the double-whammy approach - first sell 'em Sin, then sell 'em Salvation, the missionaries being the indispensable middle-men. So thousands of Japanese died because they swallowed the missionaries' self-serving mumbo-jumbo.
I had hoped that the film would be more nuanced, exploring the rights and wrongs of missionising. Instead Scorcese chooses to do a propaganda piece - glorifying brave, noble missionaries against the cruel Japanese government.
Not a great film.