An Earnest Examination of Faith

Rating: 8/10 (3 January 2017)

Two priests, alike in their devotion for their former mentor, enter the country of Japan to find word of his fate. It is the 16th century and more than a decade has past since the Shimabara Rebellion which caused the Tokugawa Shogunate to actively suppress Catholicism across Japan. "The moment you set foot in that country, you step into high danger," warns the priests' superior. "You will be the last two priests to enter Japan. An army of two." Thus Silence begins; our attention and in many ways our faith is carried through by the quest of the sincere but arrogant Rodrigues (Garfield) and the pragmatic and terse Garrpe (Driver).
It is a well known fact in film circles that director Martin Scorsese is a devout Catholic whose faith at one point geared him towards joining the priesthood. You get a sense of that whenever Catholicism inserts itself into his work (as it often does). There are obvious tonal shifts which do a good job at paying proper respect to the divine without taking away from the story. At his most reverential however, such as in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), that tone greatly enriches the film as if shining a light on an ancient gold quilled manuscript or filtering a beam of sun between panes of stain glass windows.
That constant reverence shows up here, though Silence wisely injects oceans of naturalistic beauty that at times feel more like parts of Kundun (1997) than, say, the catholic mass in Mean Streets (1973). Despite a change in setting, similar questions echo in the dark caverns, lush bamboo forests and Edo period fortresses of this film. Can you be forgiven selfish acts in the pursuit of selflessness? Why do bad things happen to good people? Is redemption achievable? - and probably most importantly, is anyone really up there? None of these questions are of course answered; how can they be, given the pain and suffering so many go through in the course of this film. Catholics, largely peasants and laymen are forced to blaspheme, are tortured and/or executed for the sake of preserving the foundations of Japanese sovereignty against what they see as European encroachment. In voice over, Rodrigues comments that he has never seen a race more devoted to the faith, - his reflections betray his own wavering devotion and can't help but feel incredibly naive in the face of Inquisitor Inoue's (Ogata) questions.
It's no stretch to presume that silence is an important motif in the film. The lack of a film score and the story's inclusion of secret masses only cajoles the audience into listening intently for a lack of noise. What we hear instead are constant insertions of God's grace: the gentle breezes, the crashing of waves, the rustling of bushes and trees. Only once does the film go completely quiet. Only then does Scorsese, for the first time presume to know the judgment of God where before he has remained silent.
The faithful and the faithless will no doubt see Silence in vastly different ways. As a lapsed Catholic myself, I can sit uncomfortably on the fence and see two camps forging a mutual appreciation for the film while taking potshots at its transgressions. One camp appreciates the religious seriousness and contemplation of Silence; a mode that only inhabits a mainstream Hollywood feature maybe once every decade. The other, more secular side gravitates towards the film as form. Those in the know will catch on to the channeling of Japanese greats such as Kenji Mizoguchi, Masaki Kobayashi and especially Akira Kurosawa.
Yet what's sorely lacking from Silence is a sense of history. We get a very satisfying and granular peek onto one man's crisis of conscience but we get very little information on the social, political and economic forces that have shaped Rodrigues's harrowing story. As a vessel for proved colonization and cultural genocide, Catholicism, sadly only gets a third-act tongue lashing. Also, setting up Japan's aggressive period of isolation as an original sin of sorts, could have made for an interesting dimension. Alas that tact is ignored to make room for meditations on private vs. public faith. Also for a movie about Japan starring an almost exclusively Japanese cast, it's disheartening we're spending so much time with the only three white people on the islands.
All in all, Silence stops just short of being a must-see cinematic experience. There's a lot to recommend here, and considering how much it gets right, I'd venture to say the movie might just transubstantiate for you. Scorsese has stated in the past that he's been interested in adapting this story to the screen for over a quarter century, but has never felt ready until now. Some people may think he finally came around to it after maturity in his faith. I'd venture to say it's penance for making The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).