page_title: Silence (2016 film)
section_title: Plot
hierarchical_section_title: Silence (2016 film) / Plot
context_page_description: Silence is a 2016 internationally co-produced epic historical drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and with a screenplay by Jay Cocks and Scorsese, based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Shūsaku Endō. Set in Nagasaki, Japan, the film was shot in Taiwan, using studios in Taipei and Taichung and locations in Hualien County. The film stars Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Liam Neeson, Tadanobu Asano, and Ciarán Hinds. The plot follows two 17th-century Jesuit priests who travel from Portugal to Edo-era Japan via Macau to locate their missing mentor and spread Catholic Christianity. The story is set in a time when it was common for the faith's Japanese adherents to hide from the persecution that resulted from the suppression of Christianity in Japan during the Shimabara Rebellion against the Tokugawa shogunate. These are now called the kakure kirishitan, or "hidden Christians". It is the second filmed adaptation of Endō's novel, following a 1971 film of the same name.
  The pre-production phase of the filmmaking for Silence went through a cycle of over two decades of setbacks and reassessments.
context_section_description: The film begins with a prologue where the veteran Portuguese Jesuit priest Cristóvão Ferreira witnesses the torture of Japanese converts he has been trying to bring to the Christian faith. The priest appears to be helpless in the presence of Japanese authorities conducting the torture and cannot assist his converts in any way.
  A few years later, at St. Paul's College, Macau, an Italian Jesuit priest, Alessandro Valignano, receives news that Ferreira renounced his faith in Japan after being tortured. In disbelief, Ferreira's Portuguese pupils, the young Jesuit priests Sebastião Rodrigues and Francisco Garupe, set off to find him. Kichijirō, an alcoholic fisherman who fled Japan to save himself, agrees to guide them. Some time later, the Jesuits learn that Kichijirō's entire family were killed and he renounced his faith.
  Arriving in Japan at the village of Tomogi, the priests are dismayed to find local Christian populations driven underground, living in fear of a figure whom the villagers refer to as the "Inquisitor." Both priests are then horrified when Japanese officials searching for suspected Christians strap some of the villagers to wooden crosses by the ocean shore, where the tide eventually drowns them. The bodies are then cremated on a funeral pyre which the priests understand is done to prevent a Christian burial.
  Garupe leaves for Hirado Island, believing that their presence forces the shogunate to terrorize the village. Rodrigues goes to Gotō Island, the last place Ferreira lived, and finds it destroyed. Wandering around Gotō, he finds himself close to despair. He eventually reunites with Kichijirō, who betrays him into the hands of the samurai. An older samurai, who acts throughout as interpreter, tells Rodrigues that other captured Christians will suffer unless he renounces his faith.
  Rodrigues is taken to Nagasaki, where he is imprisoned with many Japanese converts. At a tribunal, he is told Catholic doctrine is anathema to Japan. Rodrigues demands to see the Inquisitor, governor Inoue Masashige, who he learns, to his dismay, is the old man seated before him in charge of the proceedings. Rodrigues is returned to prison, and Kichijirō soon is imprisoned as well. He explains to Rodrigues that court officials threatened him so that he would betray Rodrigues. Kichijirō insists he is a Christian and asks to be absolved of his betrayal through a confession, which Rodrigues reluctantly grants him. He later is released after being told to step on a fumi-e (a likeness of Christian figures), an act symbolizing rejection of the faith. Later, Rodrigues is brought under guard to the shoreline to await someone. In the far distance, he witnesses an emaciated Garupe and four other prisoners approaching on the shoreline under separate guard. The four other prisoners are taken offshore on a small boat and are dropped from the boat one-by-one as an inducement to get Garupe to renounce his faith. Rodrigues is restrained by guards on shore as he watches Garupe refuse to apostatize. He then sees the desperate Garupe attempt to swim offshore to rescue the last prisoner, where he drowns with the other four prisoners.
  After some time, Rodrigues is eventually taken to meet an older Ferreira. Ferreira says he committed apostasy while being tortured, and states that after 15 years in the country and a year in the temple, he believes Christianity is futile in Japan. Rodrigues repudiates him, but Ferreira is implacable. That night in his prison cell, Rodrigues hears five Christians being tortured. Ferreira tells him that they have already apostatized; it is his apostasy the Japanese demand to relent. Rodrigues struggles over whether it is self-centered to refuse to recant when doing so will end others' suffering. As Rodrigues looks upon a fumi-e he hears the voice of Jesus, giving him permission to step on it, and he does.
  Rodrigues, like Ferreira before him, is allowed to live in the country with an adopted Japanese name and takes a wife, their expertise on Christianity being used occasionally to prevent Dutch Dejima traders from bringin
caption: An active fumarole at Yangmingshan, Taiwan.
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