EPEOLATRY

MOVIE 5

Silence (2016)

Dir: Martin Scorsese

"I do because you are just like me. You see Jesus in Gethsemane and believe your trial is the same as His. Those five in the pit are suffering too, just like Jesus, but they don't have your pride. They would never compare themselves to Jesus. Do you have the right to make them suffer? I heard the cries of suffering in this same cell. And I acted."

Martin Scorsese is been working on Silence for 28-years, it’s his passion project. Scorsese was given the book of Shūsaku Endō’s ‘Silence’ as a gift by Archbishop Paul Moore after a screening of ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ and Scorsese read it a year later in Japan while he was working on Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams. This film was so close to Martin personally due to his real life dilemma between faith and doubt, he wanted to become a priest in younger age before he started directing that he joined a preparatory school but unfortunately failed in trails, since then he’s been searching for meaning about God and religion. All these times until 2016, Scorsese studied its aspects and didn’t start making it tell he felt that he’s closer to understanding it. And the result, we get a breathtakingly beautiful film with a magnificent screenplay - that seems to be written after extensive research that it reads like a book with each line so fascinating.

In 17th century, Two Jesuit priests Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Garupe (Adam Driver) of Catholic Church in Portugal are determined to preach Catholicism and locate their mentor Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson) who is rumoured to have committed apostasy in Japan. But as they reach a village near Nagasaki they find that the converted Christians are hiding their religion from the Empire and those who are found to be Christians are brutally executed by the Imperial Government. Now, initially we find the Christians as protagonists and Buddhists as antagonists, but that’s not entirely true - the reason of this oppression by Japanese is that they worry Western colonialization on their lands, that they would corrupt their people into abandoning their own heritage and values - for them to sustain is to save their culture and religion by making the Christians step on an imagery of Christ and the Foreign Padres (the main roots) to denounce their religion under harsh punishments to their followers. On the other hand, Priests from Spain and Portugal are on a pursuit to complete the mission of ‘Jesus Christ’ and to help people.

Despite its theme of religious conflict, it doesn’t advertise us about religion, I’m an agnostic myself, though I was moved to see the struggles of both Fathers for the people, their strong faiths in Christ was that they can go to any extent for that, their forgiving and loving nature was utterly touching. On the other hand, I just love the Samurai culture of Buddhist - it’s so beautiful. I mean they’re among the strongest and most loyal culture and great heritage in the world, they’re driven by values with firm basis and even Buddhist philosophy is deep (far more than Christianity, I believe) have all the reasons to save themselves either by hook or crook - that reminds me of ‘Niccolò Machiavelli’ his philosophy on how unethical methods a prince has to apply to sustain his kingdom. We actually know that happened in history; how on around 18th century due to globalization Japan began to follow West and was losing it's culture and how the Samurai culture was confronted by the modern society; as a result what remains of it is in literature and museums :(

This is among the best directed films of Scorsese, the cinematography was beautiful - we see the shades of blue in the film initially describing the cold weather and the Christians that are in hiding but as the film progresses we see the shades of yellow and red whenever the Christians are forced to denounce their religion, the background looks sublime in every single shot - the mountains, the beach, the mist - we feel the humidity in it; the brutal violent scenes are shot in the backdrop of beautiful nature.

Father Rodrigues is subjected to too much physical agony and mental torture that he starts getting doubts on how the ever-loving God can let this happen to their innocent children, as film progresses we notice Rodrigues descent into madness. In one scene, we see Rodrigues watching his face in a pod of water, he sees Jesus Christ’s face on himself, and is renewed by his undying faith deep in his heart and trust in his mission; this reminds me of an Oscar Wilde’s famous quote “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” In progression, the condition arises that Rodrigues Christian brothers have to be executed if he isn’t ready to denounce his religion, by that he’s in an existential dilemma that are the lives of people more important or the 10 commandments of bible that comes with the statutory warning that ‘I Lord, Never Change’

The Title ‘Silence’ is actually a signature style of Scorsese, he’s always been using the pure silence in the moments of pure tension or big revelations in all his movies. In this film, we see its various use as a theme also the soundtrack is supported with the noises of insects, the flow of waves and also various birds rather than some emotionally upheaving music.