stunned into silence

Rating: 3/10 (11 January 2017)

20 years in the making (apparently) and yet the most stark silence was that of the audience after the movie who clearly and with understandable deference to the Scorsese canon, were unwilling to immediately call this movie out for the self-indulgent disaster it actually is and could find few words to compensate for the searing boredom most had undoubtedly endured. Perhaps it's art masquerading as entertainment but, for me, it fails as either. The story was sparse, the characters undeveloped, the cinematography sometimes lush and promising and often the best thing about the movie. The message? There was little here that gave me anything to chew on. Faith is a tough gig at any time but particularly on a clandestine crusade in 17th century Japan? Sure. When life is almost unbearably awful the promise of paradise in the afterlife is alluring? Uh-huh. Belief is riddled with ambiguity, uncertainty, fear and doubt. Yep, I get it. If we were meant to sympathise or even empathise with a mission to convert the peasant classes in isolated and xenophobic Japan then I failed, badly. When God spoke in the silence I got confused, more worryingly so did the Jesuit priest. What was the question Scorsese was struggling so obviously to answer? I don't know but as Bukowski once said "for those who believe in God most of the big questions are answered" and for those who don't? Well they have an opportunity to be their own God.