Old-school religious epic turned torture porn

Rating: 6/10 (30 July 2017)

It's hard to rate "Silence" because it's one of those movies that has a lot of good going for it, but ultimately loses it's way, and my appreciation of it drops the more I think about it. My original rating was "8". "Silence" ultimately does not work as Scorsese's flaws get the best of him.
This is a movie about Catholicism, perhaps made for Catholics. It shows that this production had it's inception in late 1980s, as it is similar to the "priests travel to a foreign land and suffer" epics of the era, from "The Mission" to "Black Robe", the latter which it most resembles in pace and visual style. Many of the religious practices and references (what is a Jesuit? Why are they talking in Latin?) will be lost on non-Catholic audiences. However, most with some understanding of European history will appreciate that this is the opposite of a Spanish Inquisition movie: the Catholic priests are the ones persecuted and tortured by an Inquisitor who tries to get them to denounce their faith. I grew up very Catholic, and I've come to appreciate different main types of practicing devout Catholics: 1) those who only focus on Jesus suffering for others' sin, the need to repent, the need to suffer, and yelling that everyone else is a sinner; 2) the ritualistic, who are focused on repetitive prayers, rituals, statues, and rosaries (e.g. Marianists); 3) the institutional crowd, who worship the Church itself, with focus on Roman Empire culture and social conservatism as a way of maintaining feudalistic/oligarchic societies (e.g. Opus Dei and Benedict XVI's crowd); 4) those who focus on trying to carry out good deeds, love, build communities, and transcend the material (e.g. Franciscans, Carmelites, and Jesuits). In "Silence", Scorsese tries to explore all of these aspects of Catholicism to some degree or another, but seems to settle on mostly the first two.
Thus after an intriguing first hour, with great cinematography, and an interesting story of missionaries overcoming their needs and doubts to try to give hope to those who live wretched lives (and how much religion properly translates), and those who risk their life for their faith, we are treated to a visually and aurally unpleasant second hour. This hour is a repetitive depiction of people being tortured and killed, while they either follow their own rituals, or follow a Japanese ritual to renounce their faith. In fact, it mostly consists of a Shogun with an improbably ugly, nasal voice and his associates yelling "Trample!" at poor, suffering Japanese peasants, who cry and say "I don't want to trample!" to Andrew Garfield's priest, after which we see feet step on a bronze plaque with a religious image, and then see the peasants are whacked half the time anyway, while a priest cringes. At times there's interesting dialogue on theology, cross-cultural misunderstandings, Western vs. Eastern philosophy, the main character's arrogance, symbols vs actions in Christian faith, and facing the consequences of Catholic beliefs (pardoning of sins, going to Heaven, martyrdom) when things go sour. At it's thematically best, "Silence" explores it's title by addressing the flip side of the saying "There's no atheists in foxholes": what if you are stuck a long time suffering in the foxhole, seeing people die around you, and God doesn't answer your prayers? And here's where Scorsese's flaws as a filmmaker ruin this movie. Scorsese has always been less of an actual story teller, and prefers to show us intertwined experiences of a character, often one who is loyal to an institution or social group, with their fall from grace due to sin (pride, wrath, paranoid distrust, or lust and general hedonism). Scorsese tends to make those falls be extra-long, with repetitive scenes. We often tend to allow it to pass, as those scenes can be entertaining and dynamic, leading to the film eventually wrapping up with some sort of quick glimpse into the character's life to come. But in "Silence" the repetitive scenes are unpleasant and torturous, and ultimately become boring. Then what should be a 3-5 minute final scene instead becomes 20-30 minutes long, with a new narrator, and some pointless long shots that make you wonder if Thelma Schoonmaker gave up and walked out of the editing room. What starts as an open-minded glance into Japanese culture turns into an almost villainous depiction of it. And while thematically it goes from carefully exploring Jesuit concepts, from the vows of obedience and poverty, to a heavy exploration of the concept of Casuistry, ultimately there's a missed opportunity to explore the Jesuit concept of contemplation (detachment and "finding God in all things"), as the movie goes too far in exploring the feeling of spiritual abandonment, with an unconvincing return to spirituality.
Although the repetitive scenes are what drags down what sounds like a much better movie, they were not the only flaw. Another distracting factor is the main characters themselves. They are Portuguese priests, but the only one who looks vaguely Lusitanian is Adam Driver. Driver and Garfield start out with varying accents, before eventually giving up altogether. Liam Neeson doesn't even try, and speaks in his Liam Neeson voice, although I'm able to forgive him, as he's come to occupy that spot previously reserved for Sean Connery ("he's playing a Spaniard named Ramirez, but he speaks like Sean Connery. Who cares, he sounds cool!"). I get that this was not the original cast, who could have passed more like Portuguese. However, we have to deal with whom wound up on screen. These Portuguese are stranger as they are speaking in English, as are some of the Japanese. What's the point of making everything else look and sound authentic, if you are going to do that big change? In the end the biggest question Scorsese left me with was: did he simply make this flop to be done and get over with it, and avoid further legal battles?