Apostasy,Japanese Christians,Japanese Culture And Many Others

Rating: 8/10 (27 January 2017)

The themes that Silence has for this three-hour film includes apostasy,the persecution of Japanese Christians, the love of the Japanese people for their culture and many others about Christianity and imperialism.One theme that stands out would definitely be about God's nature together with the difference between human nature and divine nature as the film's was basically based upon it.
Director Martin Scorsese co-wrote the script with Jay Cocks tells a story of two Portuguese priests -Fathers Francisco Garupe and Sebastião Rodrigues - who travel to Japan in search for a missing priest - Father Cristóvão Ferreira,who was sent there to preach Catholicism,was reported to be dead.Both are accompanied by Japanese alcoholic named Kichijiro.
The story was evidently too long.It tried to present various themes as I previously mentioned that required many scenes such as the killing of the Japanese Christians;the Japanese soldiers explaining to Father Garupe on why they did this during the priest's capture;the presentation of Father Ferreira,who apparently has apostatized and has turned into Japanese Buddhist,as well as his conversation with Father Garupe when the latter was sent in jail; and the apostasy of Father Garupe,who turned out to become like his fellow priest,until his death.
I felt that the reason for having a long film was required to tackle the numerous themes it tried to present.But too bad that the film fell short in doing so as many scenes became boring and redundant particularly Father Garupe's indecision whether to give up his Christian faith or not.In addition to that,God's divine nature wasn't really fully explored during the Ferreira-Garupe talks for the reasons of Garupe to apostatize in the end was simply found to be minor.Overall,I felt that Scorsese missed scoring another great film in it to be included among his works.