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SDG Reviews ‘Silence’

At long last Martin Scorsese brings Japanese Catholic novelist Shusaku Endo’s masterpiece about the persecution of Japanese Christians to the screen. It was worth the wait.

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,” Father Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) tells the magistrate and grand inquisitor Inoue (Issey Ogata) in Martin Scorsese’s shattering adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s Silence .

Rodrigues is quoting, of course, the famous boast of the early Christian writer Tertullian, which epitomizes the Christian idealization of martyrdom, so near the center of Christian self-understanding.

This sensibility — often blending piety and defiance, inspiration and bravado, even self-sacrificing devotion and self-promoting PR — was rooted in pre-Christian Jewish memory as well as Christian experience of persecution, first under Jewish authorities and especially under pagan Rome. Above all, of course, it was rooted in the passion and crucifixion of Jesus.

The Christian cultus of martyrdom served Christianity well, not only during the sporadic persecutions of the early centuries, but throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern age. Stories of the early martyrs’ heroic example were both a source of comfort and hope for medieval Catholics and Orthodox living under Islamic rule and a point of pride for the faithful in Christendom.

Then Christianity went to Japan — and in Japan it encountered something new, for which even the rigors of the Diocletian persecution were no true preparation. When 17th-century Japanese authorities in the time of the Tokugawa shogunate found it necessary to send the colonial powers of Europe packing and their European Jesus with them, they didn’t just shatter the missionaries’ bodies. They shattered their narrative.

Endo, one of Japan’s greatest novelists and a Catholic (he has been called a “Japanese Graham Greene,” which is about as useful, and as inexact, as most such analogies), explored this painful history in his 1966 novel Silence , generally regarded as his masterpiece. Scorsese read the book in Japan over a quarter century ago, shortly after finishing The Last Temptation of Christ , and wanted to film it ever since.

While I am (to put it mildly) no fan of Last Temptation , I did note, writing about it 15 years ago, that it was a film I could only imagine a Catholic director making. Now Scorsese has made another intensely Catholic film — one that I find almost as difficult as Last Temptation , but which draws me in as powerfully as Last Temptation repels me.

In a way it draws me in like a sore tooth one can’t stop probing with one’s tongue, like a painful memory that rises unbidden in one’s mind, stubbornly unresolved. Like Of Gods and Men , but much more so, Silence tells no one exactly what they want to hear, except those who can hear nothing else.

It poses a challenge for viewers of any faith or of none, or of any culture or ethnicity, even if the challenge is not the same for everyone. A friend who is an atheist has said that Silence made him want to believe in God. For my part, Silence presses my Christian ethos to the breaking point.

It’s worth remembering that Silence has outraged many Japanese Catholics with its empathic portrayal of persecuted Christians who avoided martyrdom by trampling on fumi‑e (literally “stepping-on picture”) — images of Christ or the Blessed Virgin that suspected Christians were required to step on to express apostasy or repudiation of Christ. Over time the images are worn smooth by countless feet: mute testimony to each believer put to the test of countless past failures. How much difference would one more failure make?

For the Jesuits, the Church’s “shock troops” or special forces, such failure is not an option. When word reaches Father Rodrigues and Father Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver) in Portugal that their mentor in Japan, Father Christovao Ferreira (Liam Neeson), has apostatized under torture, they find it inconceivable and set out for Japan to learn the truth.

Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto paints Japan as a world shrouded in mist and shadow, overgrown with dense forests. The score by husband-and-wife composers Kim Allen Kluge and Kathryn Kluge is a daring ambient skein of breaking waves, insect and bird songs and other natural sounds blended with subtle instrumental effects.

More than once Japan is described as a “swamp,” an environment inhospitable to Roman Catholicism — a plant native to European soil that cannot be successfully transplanted to Japan, where its roots rot.

Rodrigues contests this: Christianity in Japan flourished for generations, he says, before the soil was poisoned by persecution. But what does Rodrigues know about Japanese Christianity? Silence hangs us on the horns of an unsettling dilemma: On the one hand, can a Christianity that is culturally European have meaning in Japan? On the other, if Christianity has changed in Japan, is it still the same faith proclaimed by the missionaries?

The missionaries teach, an interpreter (Tadanobu Asano) dismissively remarks, but will not learn. Their attitude — exemplified by Rodrigues — is that they have the Truth, and the Truth applies everywhere. Rodrigues doesn’t appreciate (as did St. Francis Xavier, who was deeply impressed with Japanese culture) that only a culture not one’s own can teach one to appreciate how profoundly one’s apprehension of truth is shaped and colored by culture, and thus to begin to fathom how differently the same truth would be appropriated by another culture.

Do the Japanese Kirishitans worship the Christian God? How would Rodrigues know? His zeal and piety are earnest and admirable, but his vision is clouded by complacency and arrogance. Perhaps Silence is a true tragedy in the classical sense, in which a virtuous man is undone by a fatal flaw.

Notably, Rodrigues seems initially stronger and more disciplined in his faith than Garupe (Garrpe in the novel), who struggles more with misgivings and failings. “You’re a bad Jesuit,” Rodrigues chides Garupe with a smile. Sometimes, though, weakness proves stronger than strength.

The themes of weakness and betrayal are embodied in the figure of Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozuka), an unhappy wretch whom the priests hire as a guide en route to Japan. A drunk, a coward, a quisling, Kichijiro earns the priests’ mistrust from the outset; he evokes both Judas and Graham Greene’s mestizo in The Power and the Glory , though, unlike both, he repents over and over again.

In time Rodrigues comes to be haunted by Kichijiro’s plight: Had he been born to a Japanese Christian community prior to the current persecution, Kichijiro might have lived out his life a happy, decent Christian. Is it his fault that he was born too late, in an era of unprecedented persecution?

Tertullian’s boast about the blood of martyrs was penned in an era of bread and circuses, in which believers willing to suffer and die for the faith could show the crowds what they were made of. In Japan, by contrast, authorities quickly learned that trying to make dramatic public examples of individual believers backfired. Now they made them suffer ignominiously, away from the public gaze.

“Smite the shepherd,” wrote the prophet Zechariah, “and the sheep will be scattered.” Not only have the Japanese inquisitors learned this lesson, they’ve also learned an insidious inverse principle: To break the shepherd, smite the sheep.

Some are willing to trample the fumi-e to live. Painful as it is, their neighbors understand, and even the authorities seem at times to regard the whole business lightly, as a mere “formality.” But what if trampling the fumi-e is not enough? Rodrigues might be willing to suffer any torture for his faith, but what happens when the cost of his fidelity is the suffering of others?

The climactic moment is much debated, and rightly so. Is it an act of betrayal? An act of self-abnegating love? Both at the same time? Less debatable is what follows. In the end, the question is not whether one has betrayed God, but whether in doing so one has abandoned him entirely, or whether there is still hope of forgiveness.

Like Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal , the title suggests the silence of heaven in the face of suffering and evil. This is an important theme, though it’s worth noting that Silence was not Endo’s preferred title, and he later regretted agreeing to the publisher’s suggestion on this point.

What makes the cross-examination of West and East vital onscreen is the depth and complexity of the performances on both sides.

Garfield and Driver both underwent substantial preparation in Ignatian spirituality under the direction of Jesuit Father James Martin, including making a silent retreat, and it pays off. Garfield channels his aura of wholesome sincerity in a direction quite different from his last long-suffering man of faith, Hacksaw Ridge ’s Desmond Doss: intellectual, reflective, sophisticated enough not to realize his limitations.

Next to him, Driver is an ascetic presence (he lost 50 pounds for the role), his sepulchral voice conveying authority and long discipline. Neeson makes the most of what is almost a glorified cameo, particularly in the unbearable reunion scene.

The Japanese actors are possibly even better. As the inquisitor Inoue, Ogata (a comedian as well as an actor) is unnervingly mercurial, a mask of courtliness giving way at times to unexpectedly humorous flamboyance and menacing contempt. Asano’s translator is a friendly, even jovial, sadist. (He’s a less familiar face to Americans than Ken Watanabe, whom he replaced thanks to what now appears to be a happy conflict.)

One of the most haunting scenes belongs to Shinya Tsukamoto as Mokichi, one of the villagers to whom the priests minister in the tense but edifying early going.

Humbled by the villagers’ devotion in extremis , Rodrigues tells Mokichi that their faith gives him strength. “My love for God is strong,” Mokichi haltingly replies. “Could that be the same as faith?” Yes, Rodrigues replies thoughtfully, it must be.

Not long after, Mokichi refuses an apostasy test and is sentenced to a ghastly crucifixion in the surf, slowly overwhelmed by the incoming tide. Toward the end, as villagers and executioners keep a mute vigil, Mokichi raises his voice and sings a plaintive Tantum Ergo (the last two verses of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Eucharistic hymn Pange Lingua ).

In a story of a long defeat, here is a privileged moment of grace. Here, for all with ears to hear, God is not silent.

See also Apostasy and Ambiguity: Silence Asks Hard Questions About Faith and Persecution

Steven D. Greydanus is the Register’s film critic and creator of Decent Films . He is a permanent deacon in the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey. Follow him on Twitter .

Caveat Spectator: Intense scenes of torture and menace, including graphic violence; ambiguous religious themes. Might be fine for mature teens.

• andrew garfield
• japanese martyrs
• liam neeson
• martin scorsese
• persecution of christians
• sdg reviews

Deacon Steven D. Greydanus Deacon Steven D. Greydanus is film critic for the National Catholic Register, creator of Decent Films, a permanent deacon in the Archdiocese of Newark, and a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. For 10 years he co-hosted the Gabriel Award–winning cable TV show “Reel Faith” for New Evangelization Television. Steven has degrees in media arts and religious studies, and has contributed several entries to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, including “The Church and Film” and a number of filmmaker biographies. He has also written about film for the Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy. He has a BFA in Media Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York, an MA in Religious Studies from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, PA, and an MA in Theology from Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ. Steven’s writing for the Register has been recognized many times by the Catholic Press Association Awards, with first-place wins in 2017 and 2016 and second-place wins in 2019 and 2015. Steven and his wife Suzanne have seven children.

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Fr. James Martin answers 5 common questions about 'Silence'

Martin Scorsese’s new film “Silence,” about 17th-century Jesuit missionaries in Japan, recently opened worldwide. In the days following its release, I’ve been asked many questions by people who know that I served as one of the film’s consultants. Many of the questions were remarkably similar. And these same issues have bedeviled a few reviewers who seem not to have fully grasped some of the film’s significant religious themes. In general, reviewers who seem open to questions of faith have admired the film—some labelling it a masterpiece. Others, apparently less sympathetic to faith in general, have been less enthusiastic.

But even some thoughtful Christian observers seem to have missed a few essential themes. Or they have understood the themes but disagreed with the film’s approach to complicated questions about apostasy and discernment. Here are my answers to some of the most common questions, and misconceptions, about “Silence.”

Needless to say, these are my own perspectives. A work of art is open to multiple interpretations, so others will inevitably disagree. For the record, I’ve discussed many of these issues over the past two years with Mr. Scorsese, his co-screenwriter Jay Cocks, as well as the actors and the creative team. But I don’t speak for them. This is my own take. ( And spoiler alert : I will be discussing several key scenes and the film’s conclusion.)

1.   Why does Father Rodrigues apostatize?

First, a definition: apostasy means the renunciation of one’s faith. In the film, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson) has already been tortured, and, in a cruel twist, the Japanese authorities threatened that if the Jesuit priest did not apostatize, the Japanese Christians among whom he ministered would be tortured and killed. As the viewer knows from the start of the film, Ferreira chose to apostatize rather than see his friends suffer. “Ferreira is lost to us,” says the Jesuit Provincial to Fathers Rodrigues and Garupe (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver). In the film, as in history, many other Jesuits and Japanese Christians are tortured and martyred.

As an aside, this threat—forcing a person to apostatize to prevent others from being tortured or killed—was seldom used on the martyrs. Typically, in Christian history, it is the person himself (or herself) who is tortured and martyred for his or her own beliefs.

Once captured, Fathers Rodrigues and Garupe are confronted with a terrible dilemma: recant their faith and set the Japanese Christians free, or hold onto their faith and let others suffer. It is an almost impossible choice. Thus, both Jesuits are forced to “discern” in a complicated situation where there are no easy answers. Fathers Rodrigues and Garupe come from a world of black-and-white and are both forced to make painful decisions in a world of gray.

Some critics seem to have misunderstood the inherent difficulty of the choice. “Why didn’t they just step on the image of Jesus right away?” one journalist asked me.

This misses a key point. A Jesuit’s entire life is centered on Jesus, whom he knows through the Gospels, through the sacraments, through his ministry and through his prayer, especially through his experience of the Spiritual Exercises, a series of extended meditations on the life of Christ. Father Rodrigues is shown several times speaking aloud to Jesus, praying to Jesus and imagining Jesus’s face. Jesus is central for both real Jesuits and fictional Jesuits. Expecting the Jesuits simply to throw that relationship aside—to apostatize—is wholly unrealistic.

Only in the end, after several searing experiences that include his own physical suffering and witnessing the torture and execution of others, after long periods of agonizing prayer and, in particular, after hearing the voice of Christ in his prayer, does Father Rodrigues apostatize.

He apostatized not simply because he wished to save the lives of the Japanese Christians, but because this is what Christ asked him to do in prayer. Contrary to what some Christian critics have concluded, it is hardly a glorification of apostasy.

Confusing as it seems to some Christian viewers, Christ requests this contradictory act from his priest. It makes little sense to anyone, least of all to Father Rodrigues, who has assiduously resisted it for himself. Yet he does it. Because Jesus has asked him to.

How can we understand that theologically? Perhaps by looking at the experience of Jesus on the cross, as recorded in the Gospels. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus struggles mightily to understand God’s will, and says, “Father if you are willing, remove this cup from me.” He does not wish to die. But then he says, “Yet not my will, but yours be done” (Lk 22:42). Jesus does something that everyone in his circle opposes and misunderstands. Even Peter doesn’t want Jesus to suffer: “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!” (Mt. 16:22).The apostles do not want Jesus to suffer, much less to embrace the cross. It makes no sense to them.

Yet Jesus accepts his fate because this is what the Father asks. His actions make no sense outside of his relationship to the Father. Likewise, Father Rodrigues’s actions make no sense outside of his relationship to Christ. In a sense, there is nothing subtle here: He apostatizes, finally, because Christ asks him to. And for those who say that Christ would never ask something like that, ask yourself how the disciples felt when Jesus told them he would have to suffer and die.

Some of the discussion surrounding this movie may even reflect the debates going on inside the church today about Pope Francis’ emphasis on “discernment” for people facing complicated situations, where a black-and-white approach seems inadequate. A Jesuit friend felt the essential question the movie poses is: Can we trust that God works through a person’s conscience, and that God helps us discern the right path in complex situations, where the normal rules seem inadequate to the reality of the situation?

A Jesuit spiritual tradition may also be helpful here. In the Spiritual Exercises St. Ignatius speaks of three levels, or “degrees,” of humility. The first level is when one does nothing morally wrong. In other words, one leads a good life. The second level is when a person who, when presented with the choice of riches or poverty, honor or disgrace, is free of the need for either. In other words, the person is free to accept whatever God desires, not being “attached” to one state or the other.

The third level of humility, the highest, is when a person is able to choose something dishonorable because it brings him or her closer to Christ. “I desire to be regarded as a useless fool for Christ, who before me was regarded as such,” in the words of the Spiritual Exercises. A person accepts being misunderstood, perhaps by everyone, just as Christ was.

This is what Father Rodrigues chooses, confusing as it may be to Christian Europe, to his Jesuit superiors—and even to modern-day filmgoers.

2.  Does Father Rodrigues still believe in God after his apostasy?

To my mind, definitely. Mr. Scorsese’s film is clearer on this than the novel by Shusako Endo. The novel’s epilogue, told from the vantage of a Dutch clerk in Japan, who recounts the story of Father Rodrigues after his apostasy, leaves open the question of his faith. Frankly, I found the ending of the book maddeningly vague.

The film, however, leaves no doubt, as I see it. Several scholars believe this was Endo’s underlying intent: Rodrigues holds onto his faith even after his public apostasy. Mr. Scorsese and Mr. Cocks have given filmgoers an image to convey this interpretation: the magnificent final scene, which shows Rodrigues’s funeral rites, during which his Japanese wife inserts into the dead man’s hands his old crucifix, given to him by one of his Japanese Christian friends. When I first read the scene in the script I was deeply moved by this image of “holding on” to one’s faith.

My own interpretation is that Rodrigues’s wife grasped how important the crucifix was to her husband and, in turn, how important his faith was to him. It’s also important for viewers who doubt his faith to ask themselves why Rodrigues would have held onto this object if he no longer believed—especially at risk to himself and his family.

Admittedly, I am biased. I want Father Rodrigues to have held onto his faith, and when I first read the script I was grateful for this scene, clearer than the novel’s vague ending.

At the same time, I may understand Father Rodrigues’s position in a special way. As a Jesuit I know what it is like to encounter Jesus in the Spiritual Exercises. (By the way, so does Andrew Garfield .) The notion that a Jesuit could suddenly disbelieve in the Jesus he had known for his entire Jesuit life seems absurd. Again, I am distinguishing this from the public apostasy. Even Father Ferreira, as subtly played by Liam Neeson, seems to reveal his discomfort with his public apostasy, as he shows in his conversation with Rodrigues. In the film, Ferreira’s words speak of apostasy but, to me, his face indicates he is still struggling with his decision.

But there is an easier way to see that Rodrigues still believes in God. At the end of the film, despite having publicly recanted his faith, he addresses God in prayer. “To this very day, everything I do, everything I’ve done speaks of him. It was in the silence that I heard your voice,” he says.

If he didn’t believe in God, he wouldn’t be speaking to God.

3.  Is Kichijiro intended to be a comic character?

I’ve heard that the figure of Kichijiro, initially Rodrigues’s and Garupe’s Japanese guide, and later Rodrigues’s friend, elicited some chuckles in movie theaters. Kichijiro is, by his own admission, a sinful man. He repeatedly apostatizes and cravenly turns Rodrigues in to the Japanese authorities.

Time and again, Kichijiro returns  to Rodrigues for confession, and towards the end of the film, after Rodrigues’s apostasy, he seeks out the former priest to hear his confession.

Some viewers have found Kichijiro’s manifold weaknesses and his repeated desire for confession amusing. I found it human. Who hasn’t struggled with a sin that comes back to haunt us? Who hasn’t felt embarrassed about repeatedly confessing the same sins? Who hasn’t longed for God’s forgiveness?

Towards the end of the film, this seemingly weak man also helps to bring Father Rodrigues back to his priesthood by seeking confession. In a moving scene, Father Rodrigues places his head on Kichijiro’s head, as if in prayer. Or absolution.

Kichijiro’s final scene may be the most mysterious. A Japanese authority notices a necklace around Kichijiro’s neck and rips it off. He opens the leather pouch and discovers a Christian image. Kichijiro is revealed as a Christian and is swiftly led away, presumably to die.

It took me three viewings to realize something: Kichijiro would become a traditional Christian martyr. Kichijiro would become the kind of person that Catholics would later venerate. How ironic that this “weak” man becomes the inadvertent hero, while the “stronger” man, Rodrigues, whose “martyrdom” is of a different type, will not be venerated. It is a mysterious meditation on sacrifice and martyrdom.

4. Why was God “silent”?

This is perhaps the most difficult theological question. It is not surprising that both Endo and Scorsese took the word as the title of the book and the film. Over and over, Father Rodrigues laments God’s silence. The meaning here, it would seem, is twofold.

First, Rodrigues does not experience God’s presence in his prayer, and he feels God’s absence in the lack of clarity over whether he should apostatize. Second, he feels that God is silent in not helping those being tortured and killed. The scene of the two Jesuits watching from afar as the Japanese Christians are crucified in the ocean depicts this torment.. They long for something to be “done” to prevent their deaths.

In the first case, there are numerous examples of devout Christians feeling distant from God. The  best known contemporary example is St. Teresa of Calcutta, who experienced a long “dark night” of silence for many decades, until the end of her life. Endo’s book was written before the knowledge of Mother Teresa’s silence was made public, but he was aware of other saints who have experienced silence, for example, St. John of the Cross. Like St. Teresa of Calcutta, Rodrigues does not hear God’s voice in his prayer as he once did. This is painful, but not rare.

Yet by the end of the film, Rodrigues says that God was in “everything.” (The Jesuit way of saying this is “finding God in all things.”) “It was in the silence that I heard Your voice,” he says. Besides hearing the voice of Christ asking him to trample on the fumie , he recognizes that God was all around him, even if not speaking directly to him in his prayer. God may not have been speaking to him interiorly, he realizes, but exteriorly.

The second question is more difficult. Why does God “permit” the Japanese Christians and the Jesuits to suffer? This is the great theological “problem of suffering” or “problem of evil.” In short, “Why is there suffering?” As anyone who has experienced profound suffering knows, even the devout believer, there is no satisfying answer to this question.

Three Christian perspectives, however, may be helpful.

First, the Christian believes that Jesus, who himself underwent suffering, understands suffering and is close to the one who suffers. Second, as a refinement on that insight, some theologians speak of God suffering with those who suffer. Third, Christians believes that suffering is never the last word. There is always hope of the Resurrection, of new life not only for the one who suffers, but for humanity.

Where was God when the Japanese Christians were being tortured and crucified? I would suggest: With them, close to them, beside them and watching with as much anguish as Fathers Rodrigues and Garupe did as they watched their friends being crucified in the ocean.

5. Why were the missionaries there?

This was another common question among reviewers who faulted not simply the failure ofFathers Rodrigues and Garupe to apostatize quickly, but their very presence in Japan. Why were they there at all?

The history of Christian missionaries—in Japan and elsewhere—is a complicated one. Remember that when speaking about “Christian missionaries” we are talking about a 2,000-year history that begins with St. Paul and took place in almost every country in the world. Add to that the variety of the originating countries of the missionaries, and you get an idea of the complexity of the history. Even if we consider simply the era in which the film is set, the 17th century, almost every European country, was sending Christian missionaries abroad. Also, we must take into account the wide variety of approaches among the many Catholic religious orders active in the missionary field: Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans and so on. In some instances, missionary priests, brothers and sisters traveled with representatives of the colonial powers and were seen, rightly or wrongly, as adjuncts of these political actors.

But the missionaries came to these new lands to bring what they considered a gift of inestimable value to the people they would meet: the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Let us look at the case of Fathers Rodrigues and Garupe. Both have come to Japan to spread the Gospel. (We can reasonably presume their being sent from Portugal not simply to find Father Ferreira but later to remain in Japan.) They are bringing what they consider to be the most precious thing that they know to a new people: Jesus. Is it arrogant to say that they are bringing a gift? Others may think so, but not to my mind. Think of it as a physician wanting to bring medicine to someone he or she knows is in need. And doing so at peril to his or her own life.

In reality, Jesuit missionaries poured themselves out selflessly for the peoples among whom they ministered—enduring extraordinary physical hardships, mastering the local languages (even writing dictionaries for those languages, which are still in use), eating unfamiliar foods and working as hard as any of the people with whom they ministered. (Read the diaries of St. Jean de Brébeuf, one of the North American Martyrs, and his admonitions to his brother Jesuits that they needed to paddle their canoes as hard as the Hurons did, so as not to be seen as lazy.) This is called “inculturation,” a loving insertion of oneself into the local culture.

Jesuits both fictional and real did  this out of love. Out of love for God and love for the peoples with whom they were ministering. If you doubt their motivation I would ask this: Would you leave behind all that you knew—your country, your language, your family, your friends, your food, your culture, your traditions—to travel across the globe at immense risk, in order to give a gift to a group of people whom you’d never met, a group of people whom many in your home country think are unworthy of being given that gift—knowing that you might be tortured and killed? To me that is an immense act of love.

In the end, “Silence” is about love. Or maybe loves. Father Rodrigues’s and Father Garupe’s love for their old mentor, Father Ferreira. The three Jesuits’ love for the Japanese people. Father Rodrigues’s intense love for Jesus Christ.

Most of all, Jesus’s love for him, for his brother Jesuits, for the people of Japan and for all of humanity. Understand love and you will understand “Silence.”

James Martin, S.J., is editor at large of America Media, author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything and served as a consultant to the film “Silence.”

Catherine Cherry 7 years 7 months ago Contrary to the seven friends and Ignatian Spiritual Directors with whom I went to see this film, I felt disappointed that Fr. Rodrigues took part in an apostasy. I wanted him to be like the mother with the seven sons in Maccabees; and I kept wondering what would have happened to Christianity in Japan if he had held firm, suffered and died with the other Japanese Christians. I thought that he fell victim to the spirit of darkness masquerading as an angel of light. To me, he lost himself. In the era of Henry VIII, when St. Thomas More was confronted by his family and their suffering, and their suggestion to give in to Cromwell verbally, while maintaining his faith internally, St. Thomas More said his self was like sand in his hand and if he were false to himself it would be like opening his fingers, ultimately losing his very self. With sadness, this is what I saw happen in the film. However it did challenge me and make me stronger.

James Sullivan 7 years 7 months ago Father James: this is a great commentary on the masterpiece Silence. I saw the film twice and hope to see it one more time. The acting, the screenplay, the cinematography were all superb. The movie has stayed with me for weeks. Silence is a classic. Mr.Scorsese: We can't thank you enough for this beautiful work of cinematic art.

IGNACIO SILVA 7 years 7 months ago Thanks for that, Padre. I saw Kichijiro as the Everyman, the compulsive or addict that will quit tomorrow. Straying time and time again and confessing only to repeat. The area that is not clear, to me anyway, is the claim from Inoue that Japan is not the proper soil for Christianity. Culturally speaking, are some peoples inured to the Good News? That one left me in a quandary about the universality of C(c)atholicism. Well, for certain, Silence is not entertainment. It is a deep opus that raises doubt while stitching in faith at the seams of uncertainty.

william murphy 7 years 7 months ago While I can understand what you are saying regarding why he stepped on the image of Christ, why not end it there? He did it, flee Japan, go and continue his priesthood. But why give up the priesthood and get married?

James Lohrmann 7 years 7 months ago Fr. Martin, I enjoyed your commentary on the film and I am glad you were involved with the film. I was troubled however by your justification for Rodrigues' apostasy. Because Christ told him to do it? But how could Christ contradict the Church and the Scriptures? Jesus said if you deny me before man I will deny your before my heavenly Father. He also says that a house divided against himself cannot stand. Christ cannot contradict his words in Scripture, and if he does, we should strongly question whose voice we're actually hearing.

Father Martin, your work is incredible. I would definitely be interested in the answer to this!

This essay is a great help to understanding the film in its deeper theological/spiritual contexts. As Pope Francis likes to point out, life is messy and important decisions are rarely clear. Love is equally messy and ambivalent, as we all experience, and your emphasis on the "three loves" at play in the film really deepened my appreciation for it. I loved the movie, for its lack of clarity and pious banality. Thanks, Jim, for moving readers into the mystery of love, betrayal and commitment. I agree: Rodrigues kept his faith, deep down, right to the end of his life. And who knows? Perhaps his wife is a secret Christian at that point!

Something small that stuck out to me, which I think speaks of a larger theme, is that when the martyrs were hung on crosses in the ocean there were three of them, clearly mirroring the crucifixion of Christ. In the Endo's version there were only two. The third martyr in the movie evidences this by his relative anonymity as a character. One of Endo's points in the novel is that life can't be idealized. Christians aren't perfect, and neither is martyrdom, crucifixion, or anything in this world. Rodriguez tries very hard though, through his narration (most of the chapters are written as if they were letters of his) to idealize the things he experiences in Japan--or rather to fit them into his idea of a perfect struggle. Only two crosses is a little chink in that armor that the movie misses, and while it represents the original author's intentions fairly well, this aspect of imperfection and grayness, as Father Martin aptly describes it, is sometimes missed in its dramatization. Another example of this is the inquisitor, who is described literarily as (at least on the surface) a pleasant old Japanese man, while he is played on screen as obviously repugnant and scheming. Rodriguez also repeatedly (in both versions of the story) meditates on Christ's face and its beauty. While I now understand more about the Jesuit perspective in relation to Christ, I couldn't help thinking about Isaiah 53:2 every time I saw this. This verse states: "he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him", and it is consistent, I think, to the idea that the message of the Gospel is not alluring from the perspective from the world. Rodriguez doesn't quite understand Father Martin's answer to the first question.

The point of the story, for me, is to accept that it is impossible to be blameless, to understand our problems, and to try to follow Christ's example all the same. Kichijiro is the perfect example.

Thank you, Fr Martin. I have just seen SILENCE, and it will not leave me. I thought Andrew Garfield communicated so well the internal struggle of Rodrigues, and I had to let go of my own preference for how the movie was to turn out and embrace the character and not a particular desired ending. Your assessment of Kichijiro is spot on - he is all of us who sin and sin again, and who, hopefully, continually seek forgiveness. Classic film, eternal struggle, certainty not an option.

During Father Rodrigues's "apostasy" scene, I was devastated sitting in the theater, literally with my hands grappling my head... until the voice of Jesus. At that point a grateful catharsis hit me. What an effective way to remind Christians of Jesus's suffering so that we might live. Rodrigues was already forgiven this sin, and I also believe his faith, though tested, remained intact. If not for the last scene, then based on other visual signals, like the blue, patterned kimono Rodrigues wore in a scene shortly after. Its design could have been construed as hundreds of tiny crosses. I like to believe that was Mr. Scorsese trying to clue the audience in on the enduring strength of Father Rodrigues's relationship with Jesus.

The apostasy of Father Rodriguez could be viewed as an act of weakness. Certainly he has a character with its weaknesses. Who does not? Does Christ order his apostasy? Christ does not order someone to commit sin.

Does Christ ask Father Rodriguez to apostasize? Certainly Christ never asks a person to sin. I see Christ's words at that moment as meaning that Christ promises not to abandon him in what fate has allowed to happen. Christ says that he will abandon him to his weakness. Father Rodriguez is weak, but weakness is a human thing. Who can boast that he cannot be broken? An idle boast. Father Rodriguez is weak, but he is a man who has been touched by Christ, he is a man in transformation, a man underway, a man like you and I. Stubbornness is not a virtue. Faith is a gift of God. Thank you Father Martin for thoughtful reflections on a thoughtful Christian film.

In the novel we hear what Fr Rodrigues hears. People talking, the wind, the moans of Christians suffering, and over and over the cicada. Not until the end do we hear the comfort brought by Jesus in the Silence. There is another dimension to this novel, namely accompaniment. Rodrigues often sees the Christian old lady and describes her as the one who gave him a cucumber. She was with him. And so is Kichijiro. He is the one that brings him back to his faith. But in what sense did Fr Rodrigues loose his faith. Only in the sense of the rules that he violated of his Portuguese church. He feels excommunicated because of their rules. Not the rules of Jesus. Jesus still turns to him as he did to Peter when the cock crowed, which the novel does remind us of. It is Kichijiro that stays with him through his torture and yes even seduces him into capture. But he still returns and returns and returns. And eventually, he returns to Jesus, yes this stinking, weak creature brings the presence of Christ to Fr. Rodrigues.

I wanted to see the movie only after reading the novel, which I recently did. Hope I can still find a place to see the movie these days.

In the novel, that Father Rodrigues actually heard the command by Jesus to trample on the fumie is not so clear. As he steps on it, a cock crews, signaling an act of treason. And the end of the novel, there is no love between Ferreira and Rodrigues, as they both hate what they see in the other: a man that receives salary as a collaborator, a man that have been given a Japanese wive and a Japanese name by the evil magistrate Inoue -their new master.

Ferreira and Rodrigues do immediately save Japanese Christians lives with their own apostasy, but how many do they condemn as monthly consultors for the Japanese Inquisition? Especially Ferreria comes out as corrupt with his servile laughter towards his patrons and his assault on the weakened Rodrigues in the dungeon: "Even Christ would apostatize out of love!"... "You will now perform the must painful act of love of your life..." Truly wicked, as Ferreira seeks to transfer responsability for the lives of the Christian peasants from the sadistic inquisitor to his tormented former pupil.

Splendid novel. May God bless Japan and reward its thousands of anonymous martyrs with the conversion of the country.

I have a question. [On page 87] When Monica, Juan and the other the Japanese peasants are about to be martyred, Rodrigues exclaims, "Don't you realize that we are all going to die in the same way?" Monica offers they will find everlasting happiness and peace in Heaven. However, at this moment, Rodrigues felt like shouting, "Heaven is not the sort of place you think it is!"

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Silence is beautiful, unsettling, and one of the finest religious movies ever made

Martin Scorsese’s film keenly understands Shūsaku Endō’s novel and challenges believer and nonbeliever alike.

by Alissa Wilkinson

Shūsaku Endō’s novel Silence (first published in Japanese in 1966 as Chinmoku , then translated into English in 1969) is slippery and troubling, a book that refuses to behave. It flatters no reader; it refuses to comfort anyone. In telling the story of Portuguese priests and persecuted Christians in Japan, it navigates the tension between missionary and colonizer, East and West, Christianity and Buddhism and political ideology, but refuses to land on definitive answers.

Martin Scorsese’s long-gestating film Silence is based on Endō’s novel, which he read shortly after his 1988 film Last Temptation of Christ was protested and condemned by the Catholic Church and other conservative Christians 28 years ago. It’s almost impossible to capture the nuances of a novel like Endō’s for the screen; Masahiro Shinoda tried in 1971 , and Endō reportedly hated the ending. But Scorsese comes about as close as one can imagine, and the results are challenging for both the faithful and the skeptic.

The struggle for faith in a world marked by suffering and God’s silence is present in every frame of Silence . The answers in Scorsese’s film, as in Endō’s novel, are found not in words, but in the spaces between them.

Silence is a story of persecution in a Japan seeking to expel foreigners

Silence is the story of two young Portuguese Catholic priests, Father Rodrigues ( Andrew Garfield ) and Father Garrpe ( Adam Driver ). They learn from their superior ( Ciarán Hinds ) that their mentor and former confessor Father Ferreira ( Liam Neeson ), who had gone to Japan as a missionary, is reported to have apostatized — that is, repudiated his faith. The rumor is that he’s now living with his wife among the Japanese.

Unable to believe such a thing of Ferreira, Rodrigues and Garrpe beg and eventually are permitted by the church to travel to Japan, where they arrive in 1639 amid a government ban on Christianity. They meet a fisherman named Kichijiro ( Yôsuke Kubozuka ), who agrees to sneak them onto an island near Nagasaki.

The Japanese government’s opposition to Christianity, and the subsequent movement of worshippers to practicing their faith underground, was the result of a complicated set of political factors. Those factors included the influx of Europeans into the country, which the government viewed as a security threat, as well as the Shimabara Rebellion , a revolt of starving peasants against their lords. The persecution of Christians was partly a way to quash the uprising.

On the island to which Kichijiro brings the priests, a group of Kakure Kirishitan (“hidden Christians”) live, practicing their faith in secret to avoid scrutiny from the government — especially Inquisitor Inoue ( Issei Ogata ), who will torture them until they recant. Inoue’s preferred method of ferreting out believers is to force them to trample on a fumie, a simple carved image of Christ. Those who trample, live. Those who refuse are tortured and killed.

Rodrigues and Garrpe live in secret, ministering to the villagers and others nearby. They feel compassion for the people, who live difficult lives of oppression and starvation. But the priests are betrayed by Kichijiro (who is a Judas figure in the story), separated, and brought under Inoue’s scrutiny.

From there the perspective is largely Rodrigues’s, as he witnesses Christians being tortured and is told that if he apostatizes, if he steps on the fumie and repudiates his faith, the others will be spared. But how can he imagine such a thing? And what would it mean for him — a priest, sworn to serve Christ — to choose to do such a thing? As he sees Japanese Christians being tortured, he calls out for answers. But he receives none in return.

Shūsaku Endō’s writing was filtered through his experience as the Other

Endō was Japanese and a Catholic, which meant that no matter where he went, he was an outsider: His Buddhist countrymen viewed him with suspicion for his religion, while the Europeans among whom he lived for years in France considered him a stranger because of his nationality. He was deeply acquainted with the experience of being the Other, and informed the way he understood most everything.

His outlook was further shaped by insights about the links between soul and body he likely gleaned from years of suffering and hospitalization due to recurring bouts of disease in his lungs (at one point, he spent two years in the hospital). For Endō, there are no easy routes to salvation; a person’s body — its ethnicity, its weaknesses, its susceptibility to pain and desire — is as much his link to the life and sufferings of Christ as a person’s soul. (In one of Endō’s novellas , which is at least partly autobiographical, the protagonist is a Japanese scholar of French literature, who is both grappling with faith and studying the Marquis de Sade, for whom sadism is named.)

All of these paradoxes seem to have shaped how Endō thought about the paradoxes of his faith: for instance, the enigma of Christ, who in Christian doctrine is both fully God and fully man. Or the conundrum of Christians being instructed to imitate Christ, while knowing that’s an impossible task for flawed humans. Or the friction between the cultures he strongly identified with, which had to include grappling with both colonialism and oppression.

And as a Catholic, Endō would have believed in the doctrine of Incarnation — that is, the idea that Jesus, the divine Son of God, took on a human body in ancient Israel, during Roman occupation. Jesus lived the life of a carpenter and an itinerant preacher among peasants and villagers, and was eventually executed, his body bruised and pierced, for being a threat to the Roman Empire and the religious leaders who capitulated to it.

So the complexity of entering a culture that is not one’s own was not lost on Endō, and he would see it through the lens of Christ’s experience. But as a person who experienced its pain himself — and as a native of a country marked by colonization — Endō would have complicated feelings about this. People are not Christ. Imitating Christ can mean imitating his incarnation, but nobody can hope to do so without cost, and nobody can do it perfectly. Those complexities surface in Silence .

Scorsese is well-suited to resonate on Endō’s wavelength: a cradle Catholic — he once considered becoming a priest — who has at times been rejected by the church, and a man who is obviously haunted by the connections between body and soul, sin and redemption.

In Silence , Scorsese has found his natural match for plumbing those questions, which he does with considerable restraint. (Readers of Endō’s novel know the descriptions of torture are sickening; in Scorsese’s hands they are more psychologically than visually distressing.) He dives deep, and comes up not with answers so much as an honest suggestion that whenever we think we’ve found the answers, we’ve veered off track. He’s described making the film as a “pilgrimage” of sorts , which denotes both a journey and a struggle, and it shows. Silence is beautifully shot and moving, but it is not what you’d call uplifting. It’s a film that demands reflection, and a rewatch.

To grasp Silence requires seeing it through Rodrigues’s eyes

The strongest, clearest way to understand the story of Silence is through the character of Rodrigues, because his arc hangs on a double thread: that of his role as a European missionary in Japan — what from the 21st century might seem like a “white savior” complex — and that of his place as a priest struggling to understand how to imitate Christ and realizing, slowly, that he can’t, or at least not the way he thought he should.

This relies on recognizing that the story is largely narrated by Rodrigues, and thus shaped by his perceptions. The point at which there’s a noticeable switch in narrators is the film’s inflection point. Everything hinges on that change.

Note: if you want to avoid spoilers, scroll down to the next image .

Silence aims a two-pronged spear right at Rodrigues’s assumptions about his work. He sees himself as a minister to the people of Japan, and so he is: The role of a priest in Catholic doctrine is to embody, in a small way, the intermediary role that Christ plays between the worshipper and God himself. (There’s a moment early on in Silence , when Rodrigues and Garrpe first meet the hidden Christians on the island, in which the hidden Christians explain that in the absence of a priest to administer the sacraments, they’ve come up with a substitute but non-ordained priest, and they wonder if that’s okay. Rodrigues and Garrpe assure them that it is.)

Rodrigues is more flexible in how he applies his understanding of faith to Japanese culture than Garrpe is. When some of his flock ask whether it is okay to trample the fumie to save their own lives, he says it is. But he holds himself, a minister, to a higher standard: It is one thing for the Japanese believer to trample, and another thing entirely for him.

There is some inkling of patronization here (and this is the 1630s, after all). Rodrigues continually speaks of the believers as miserable, suffering, living and dying as beasts; he sees them as human and worthy of salvation, but not exactly as people so much as a mass that needs tending. (For those watching closely, the film is subtly — but perhaps too subtly — critical of this mindset; Rodrigues is no saint.)

But his experience among them is mixed with a strong dose of real belief. Rodrigues is confident, as he tells Inoue in a conversation, that if Christianity cannot be true in every culture than it cannot be true at all. He believes that the good news is good news for everyone, and he is critical of a government that would seek to keep its people from freely worshipping whomever or whatever they wish.

Yet the confrontation of Christianity via Rome with Japanese culture is far more complicated than he imagined. When Rodrigues finally locates Ferreira, the former priest tells him, with sorrow, that Christianity simply cannot take root in Japan, and that there is much truth to be found in Buddhism (the state-mandated religion). This encounter visibly shakes Rodrigues.

The friction between the two — Japanese culture and Christianity — seems to be a lifelong conflict for Rodrigues, even after he finally breaks down and tramples the fumie, saving the Japanese Christians, then remains in the country to live out the rest of his life. He seems broken, his assumptions shattered; when he’s approached to hear a confession years after he leaves the priesthood, he refuses, unwilling to put the supplicant in danger.

Rodrigues’s so-called salvation looks like anything but

But that he does trample the fumie and live out his life in Japan, having publicly repudiated his faith, is both a kind of rebuke and salvation for Rodrigues. In Endō’s novel, and for much of Scorsese’s film, Rodrigues tells his own story in the form of letters, and mimicking that device, the film subtly gives us the story from his point of view. “Christ did not die for the good and beautiful. It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful,” Rodrigues muses after the baptism of a peasant child, whom he characterizes in terms that seem harsh. “The hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt — this is the realization that came home to me acutely at that time.”

It becomes clear that Rodrigues does conceive of himself and his call to imitate Christ as a call to function as a Christ-figure to the people of Japan, suffering and even dying for them if he must. But part of that call requires being the public Christian, the man of God among them. Kichijiro is his Judas, the betrayer, and Inoue is a sort of Satan tempting him with ease and comfort in the midst of his wilderness, just like Christ.

And yet this perception Rodrigues has of himself is complicated by Inoue’s challenge: trample the fumie, and not only will you live easy, but you will save the lives of these others. This is a direct challenge to Rodrigues’s perception of what it means to minister and have faith, one forged in a European context. That the image of Christ calls him to drop his preconceptions rends his heart and challenges him. He must not just repudiate his religious beliefs externally, but also relinquish his own idea of how he’ll serve God, which in turn causes him to wonder whether he is fit to do so at all.

The agony of Rodrigues’s choice to trample the fumie, then, is the agony of letting go of his self-image of faith for another one, an ignominious one in which he will always be the priest who apostatized, no longer the agent of grace and the sacraments to the Japanese. The movie (and the novel) flip to another point of view after Rodrigues’s apostatization, and now we can only see his actions from the outside, rather than experiencing them through the voiceover of his thoughts, agonies, and prayers that we heard before. Rodrigues’s faith, as it were, has become silent. His suffering for Christ isn’t physical, but spiritual: He is questioning whether his faith is faith at all, and whether God is with him even when he seems to be so far away.

But the fumie is an image of the Christ he is meant to imitate, and it is covered in mud, stepped upon by feet, nothing compared to the glorious image he holds in his mind. It’s more in keeping with the Bible’s depiction of Christ (as lowly, crucified in the manner of a thief), but its very kindness in the face of his impending betrayal is enough to break Rodrigues’s heart.

During the film’s telling, climactic moment — when Rodrigues finally tramples on the fumie — you can hear a rooster crow somewhere in the distance. That, of course, is the same thing that happened in the Gospels, when Peter denied Christ before the crucifixion.

Silence challenges the religious and non-religious alike

Since seeing Silence , I’ve been eager to know how others will react to the film. I am a Christian, and Endō’s Silence has been widely read and studied in my community for decades. Even though I’m familiar with the story, I found the film unsettling: The tendency for any religious person is to seek definitive answers for the greatest, most troubling existential questions, and I was confronted with the suffering that can happen on the path to faith, and the doubt that has to be part of that.

But it’s been remarkable to discover that Silence is a challenging film for many critics and early viewers, including those who aren’t interested in religion at all, or who don’t identify with a particular faith. The genius of Endō’s story and Scorsese’s adaptation is that it won’t characterize anyone as a saint, nor will it either fully condone or reject the colonialist impulses, the religious oppression, the apostasy, or the faltering faith of its characters. There is space within the story for every broken attempt to fix the world. Endō’s answer still lies in Christ, but his perception of Christ is radically different from what most people are familiar with — and even those who don’t identify with Christianity will find the film unnerving and haunting.

Silence is the kind of film that cuts at everyone’s self-perceptions, including my own. I haven’t been able to shake it, because I need to remember — now, frankly, more than ever — that I am not able nor responsible to save the world, let alone myself. How the world changes is a giant, cosmic mystery. To grow too far from that and become hardened in my own belief is a danger: I grow complacent and deaf, too willing to push others away.

In Silence , nobody is Christ but Christ himself. Everyone else is a Peter or a Judas, a faltering rejecter, for whom there may be hope anyway. What Scorsese has accomplished in adapting Endō’s novel is a close reminder that the path to redemption lies through suffering, and that it may not be I who must save the world so much as I am the one who needs saving.

Silence opens in limited theaters on December 23 and wide on January 6.

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Scorsese's 'Silence' is his most Catholic film

Andrew Garfield, left, plays Fr. Rodrigues, and Shinya Tsukamoto plays Mokichi in the film "Silence" by Paramount Pictures, SharpSword Films, and AI Films. (Kerry Brown)

by Rose Pacatte

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Shûsaku Endô (1923-1996) was a Japanese Catholic novelist whose extensive writings probed the conflicts and paradoxes of faith. He was born in Tokyo, lived in Manchuria, then returned to Japan and was baptized at about the age of 11. After university, he married, had a son and lived in France. The novelist Graham Greene, with whom Endo has often been compared, said he was "one of the finest living novelists" of his time.

In 1966, Endô published Silence ( Chinmoku ) , a work of historical fiction about Jesuit missionaries to Japan in the 17th century. Most believe it is his masterpiece. At long last, 28 years after reading the novel, Oscar-winning director, writer, actor and producer Martin Scorsese is bringing this story to the screen .

Word reaches Portugal and then Rome that Fr. Cristóvão Ferriera (Liam Neeson), the Jesuit superior in Japan, has renounced his faith and apostatized. Many clergy and lay people have suffered martyrdom in the past few years when the authorities banished Christianity from the country and now the mission has floundered. Yet no one can believe Ferriera has apostatized and ceased to preach the Gospel. In 1635, two young Jesuit priests, Fr. Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Fr. Francisco Garrpe (Adam Driver), with the permission of their superior Fr. Alessandro Valignano (Ciarán Hinds), set sail for Japan to rescue their former seminary professor and mentor. Their fervor knows no limits.

After a long voyage and stop in Goa, their ship docks in Macao where the two priests meet a Japanese man, a drunk named Kichijiro (Yôsuke Kubozuka), that they hope will guide them to Japan. He will not admit to being a Christian, but he does want to go home. The priests endure hardship but press forward with a guide who seems less than trustworthy.

After another long voyage with almost nothing to their names, they arrive at an island and wade to shore. Soon enough villagers recognize the "padres" and hide them away. The priests discover that Christians are living underground, baptizing their babies and praying in secret. They learn that Kichijiro is a Christian when he asks for absolution for his apostasy that had caused him to flee Japan.

It is too much for the priests to stay hidden and they venture out. They meet Christians who are grateful for their return but fearful for the padres if they are caught. But word spreads and the authorities investigate. A cunning inquisitor, Inoue (Issei Ogata), insists that Christians make themselves known and apostatize or three will be taken and killed. Three men, one of them in his 80s, refuse to step on the image of Mother and Child. Inoue's men tie them to crosses and raise them up in the ocean where they are buffeted incessantly by the waves for days until they die. The priests watch from a cave, stunned at what their presence has provoked.

The two priests decide to separate in their search for Ferriera whom they believe is in Nagasaki. Rodrigues meets Christians and hands out all the crosses and religious items he has and even gives away the beads of his rosary, one by one. He wonders if the people have more faith in sacramentals than in Jesus.

Later, Rodrigues watches as Garrpe drowns while trying to save Christians who have been thrown into the sea wrapped in mats. Rodrigues is eventually captured and made to ride a horse through a village while the people jeer and throw stones at him. Kichijiro's fervor waxes and wanes; he denies his faith only to return for absolution that Rodrigues gives him — time and time again because he apostatizes whenever he is captured. It becomes clear to Rodrigues that the weak Kichijiro is a Judas-figure. Inoue is never far and directs the inquisition of Rodrigues, challenging the priest by saying Japan is a swamp where the Christian message cannot take root. Rodrigues, unbending, responds that the truth, whether in Europe or in Japan, is the same.

Rodrigues ministers to a small group of Christians who are jailed with him. Then Inoue threatens the priest with "the pit" torture where he, and the other Christians, will be hung upside down over an enclosed pit of excrement until death or until he apostatizes. But where, in all this, is Ferriera? And Rodrigues wonders, where is God in the suffering of the people and his own anguish? Why is God silent?

"Silence" is replete with layered human, theological, and spiritual themes that writers Jay Cocks and Scorsese imbue with respect for their subject. For those who know the book, there is time compression, and the character of Inoue is an amalgam of all the inquisitors or officials in the story. Monica, a Christian woman in the final part of the book, shows up in the early scenes. Scorsese has added something to the end of the story, the very end of the book, the inclusion of which I will leave for you to judge. The cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto is either atmospherically panoramic or intensely close-up and personal. This, along with the accomplished editing of Scorsese's frequent collaborator, Thelma Schoonmaker, reveals Scorsese's Catholic and sacramental imagination at its most refined, in haunting beauty. Garfield and Driver are very good, and Driver has the look of an El Greco Christ.

There are violent scenes in the film, but Scorsese stays close to the book and shows visual restraint, something that surprised me given the explicit gore in many of his previous films. Some day, when we have all processed this film, I think we will see that "Silence" marks the height of his artistry and storytelling as a Catholic filmmaker where the character of the saint and the sinner are always near.

At the top of the thematic list are faith and doubt as partners in a dangerous dance from the moment the priests first find out about Ferriera's apostasy. They leave Portugal and Rome, their gaze focused on a land far away, bolstered by a faith yet untested. Rodrigues especially carries in his heart the image of Jesus so dear to him as a child and in the seminary. Once imprisoned it comes to him in the suffering of the people and in the night. It is this Jesus with whom he converses about his doubts, his questions and the choice he faces.

The high-pitched whine of the highly intelligent and informed inquisitor Inoue, with his polite manners and saccharine but sinister smile, do not mask his intent to break the resolve of the Christians. He challenges Rodrigues, as does Ferriera when he and Rodrigues finally meet, saying that Christianity is too Western and cannot adapt to Japan. Rodrigues says that the church is the source of truth and is unable to move off the script he learned growing up in Catholic Portugal. His responses to Inoue are noble perhaps, but ineffective. The inculturation of the Gospel and adaptation, even today, remains a challenge to those who evangelize, at home or afar.

Kichijiro, absolved again and again for his apostasy, is emblematic of sinners who are self-aware of their sin and just as cognizant of God's mercy. Kichijiro disgusts Rodrigues, and it takes the priest a long time to realize that he, too, is a weak human not so different from this dirty beggar of a sinner who cannot help himself.

On Dec. 5 Scorsese, along with members of the cast and crew, spoke to a packed audience after a screening of "Silence" at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. Days have passed, and I and my sister, Libby Weatherfield, cannot stop thinking about the film. The first thing Libby said, however, as the lights came up was, "Well, this isn't a crowd pleaser." In truth, it's not meant to be.

Even director George Lucas, who introduced the film, said, "The best way I can describe it to you is that it is interesting, because it is definitely a Martin Scorsese movie." Then he seemed to think about it a little more and said, "It's pretty extraordinary. It's one of those movies from the last century where we made all kinds of … independent, not mainstream movies. That he even got it made is a big deal. I hope you enjoy it. It's very emotional. And there's blood in it. It's Martin."

During the question-and-answer session after, Scorsese recounted his life growing up as a Roman Catholic in Manhattan and spending a year in a high school minor seminary from which he was invited to leave.

He spoke about making his 1988 film "The Last Temptation of Christ" and how people either hated it or loved it and that he spent a year going around the world either discussing or arguing about it. But there was an Episcopal priest in New York, Paul Moore, who didn't hate the film. He gave Scorsese Silence and suggested he read it. He put it aside for a year, but when in Japan in 1989 acting in the film "Dreams" for Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, Scorsese read Silence and determined to make it into a film.

Actor Andrew Garfield, who has described himself as Jewish, said that making "Silence" "transcended filmmaking" for him:

How do we show a man living a question on a movie screen, a man living in a prayer for two and a half hours? I gave myself a good year to immerse myself in all things Jesuit to understand what the word God means to me on a personal level and I made the Spiritual Exercises that St. Ignatius created, that are a rite of passage for Jesuits and members of the Catholic faith … and the idea of the active imagination. The Exercises create a transformative process in the person that makes them. Then I would talk to Marty, often at length, and we would always end up with five or six minutes of silence at the end of the conversation because we knew we had gotten as close to the core of the answer to the question possible yet we were so many light years away from the answer. He would say, 'Okay kid, until next time,' and we would never get beyond this. We would always go deeper and deeper yet further and further away from the answer. Preparing for this film was a profound journey in that way and that's the beauty and the agony of the book, the beauty and the agony of the story, the beauty and the agony of living a life of faith because it means living a life of doubt. It's the same thing as showing up on the film set every day, you have no idea of what you are doing and if you think you do, you are in trouble. What we see in all Marty's films, but in this film especially is that something deep and profound and transformative is happening in the film and within the audience absorbing it.

Adam Driver, who grew up in a Christian home, said that: "An anguished faith seemed to make sense to me. I don't know if it's because I was raised in a religious household but it's like any relationship with your parents or your kids. It's not as easy as making a decision and that's it. ... It is filled with doubt and second-guessing yourself; there's insecurity and misery. Getting ready for this I kept in mind St. Peter because this image made sense to me, as someone who is very committed but who cannot help but question and doubt every step of the way."

A man in the audience asked Scorsese, " 'The Last Temptation of Christ' and 'Silence' — in your art and mind where do these two films find each other?"

He replied, giving away part of the film's ending:

'The Last Temptation of Christ' took me to a certain point in my journey. It had to do with the Incarnation and my belief that Christ being fully divine, fully human and what this could mean. ... There seemed to be further to go [on that journey] after. But it's just isn't as simple as that. It's not a simple film and it's not a simple book. … But for myself, as a believer, unbeliever, doubter, have faith, not have faith, go through life, making mistakes, I don't know. Trying to make life better, to feel your way through to live in a better way for yourself and others primarily, 'The Last Temptation of Christ' didn't take me that far. ... I knew [ Silence ] was for me, at this point in my life, the beckoning, the call. It said, 'Figure me out,' or at least try to. ... I am not Thomas Merton, I'm not Dorothy Day… so you admire them and everything else but … how can you be like them? ... How do you live it in your daily life? That is to get to the essence, I think, for me, as a Roman Catholic, true Christianity. Because when [Fr. Rodrigues] does apostatize, he gives up anything he's proud of and he's got nothing left except service, except compassion. So, he gives up his religion, he gives up his faith in order to gain his faith. Wow. How do you do that? That's amazing. Could you do that?

[Sr. Rose Pacatte, a member of the Daughters of St. Paul, is the director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies in Los Angeles.]

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Scorsese's "silence" is his most catholic film.

• Christian , Character-driven , Film Review
• 12/30/2016 2:00:00 AM
• View Count 3734

Shûsaku Endô (1923-1996) was a Japanese Catholic novelist whose extensive writings probed the conflicts and paradoxes of faith. He was born in Tokyo, lived in Manchuria, then returned to Japan and was baptized at about the age of 11. After university, he married, had a son and lived in France. The novelist Graham Greene, with whom Endo has often been compared, said he was "one of the finest living novelists" of his time.

In 1966, Endô published Silence ( Chinmoku ), a work of historical fiction about Jesuit missionaries to Japan in the 17th century. Most believe it is his masterpiece. At long last, 28 years after reading the novel, Oscar-winning director, writer, actor and producer Martin Scorsese is bringing this story to the screen.

Word reaches Portugal and then Rome that Fr. Cristóvão Ferriera (Liam Neeson), the Jesuit superior in Japan, has renounced his faith and apostatized. Many clergy and lay people have suffered martyrdom in the past few years when the authorities banished Christianity from the country and now the mission has floundered. Yet no one can believe Ferriera has apostatized and ceased to preach the Gospel. In 1635, two young Jesuit priests, Fr. Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Fr. Francisco Garrpe (Adam Driver), with the permission of their superior Fr. Alessandro Valignano (Ciarán Hinds), set sail for Japan to rescue their former seminary professor and mentor. Their fervor knows no limits.

After a long voyage and stop in Goa, their ship docks in Macao where the two priests meet a Japanese man, a drunk named Kichijiro (Yôsuke Kubozuka), that they hope will guide them to Japan. He will not admit to being a Christian, but he does want to go home. The priests endure hardship but press forward with a guide who seems less than trustworthy.

After another long voyage with almost nothing to their names, they arrive at an island and wade to shore. Soon enough villagers recognize the "padres" and hide them away. The priests discover that Christians are living underground, baptizing their babies and praying in secret. They learn that Kichijiro is a Christian when he asks for absolution for his apostasy that had caused him to flee Japan.

It is too much for the priests to stay hidden and they venture out. They meet Christians who are grateful for their return but fearful for the padres if they are caught. But word spreads and the authorities investigate. A cunning inquisitor, Inoue (Issei Ogata), insists that Christians make themselves known and apostatize or three will be taken and killed. Three men, one of them in his 80s, refuse to step on the image of Mother and Child. Inoue's men tie them to crosses and raise them up in the ocean where they are buffeted incessantly by the waves for days until they die. The priests watch from a cave, stunned at what their presence has provoked.

The two priests decide to separate in their search for Ferriera whom they believe is in Nagasaki. Rodrigues meets Christians and hands out all the crosses and religious items he has and even gives away the beads of his rosary, one by one. He wonders if the people have more faith in sacramentals than in Jesus.

Later, Rodrigues watches as Garrpe drowns while trying to save Christians who have been thrown into the sea wrapped in mats. Rodrigues is eventually captured and made to ride a horse through a village while the people jeer and throw stones at him. Kichijiro's fervor waxes and wanes; he denies his faith only to return for absolution that Rodrigues gives him — time and time again because he apostatizes whenever he is captured. It becomes clear to Rodrigues that the weak Kichijiro is a Judas-figure. Inoue is never far and directs the inquisition of Rodrigues, challenging the priest by saying Japan is a swamp where the Christian message cannot take root. Rodrigues, unbending, responds that the truth, whether in Europe or in Japan, is the same.

Rodrigues ministers to a small group of Christians who are jailed with him. Then Inoue threatens the priest with "the pit" torture where he, and the other Christians, will be hung upside down over an enclosed pit of excrement until death or until he apostatizes. But where, in all this, is Ferriera? And Rodrigues wonders, where is God in the suffering of the people and his own anguish? Why is God silent?

"Silence" is replete with layered human, theological, and spiritual themes that writers Jay Cocks and Scorsese imbue with respect for their subject. For those who know the book, there is time compression, and the character of Inoue is an amalgam of all the inquisitors or officials in the story. Monica, a Christian woman in the final part of the book, shows up in the early scenes. Scorsese has added something to the end of the story, the very end of the book, the inclusion of which I will leave for you to judge. The cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto is either atmospherically panoramic or intensely close-up and personal. This, along with the accomplished editing of Scorsese's frequent collaborator, Thelma Schoonmaker, reveals Scorsese's Catholic and sacramental imagination at its most refined, in haunting beauty. Garfield and Driver are very good, and Driver has the look of an El Greco Christ.

There are violent scenes in the film, but Scorsese stays close to the book and shows visual restraint, something that surprised me given the explicit gore in many of his previous films. Some day, when we have all processed this film, I think we will see that "Silence" marks the height of his artistry and storytelling as a Catholic filmmaker where the character of the saint and the sinner are always near.

At the top of the thematic list are faith and doubt as partners in a dangerous dance from the moment the priests first find out about Ferriera's apostasy. They leave Portugal and Rome, their gaze focused on a land far away, bolstered by a faith yet untested. Rodrigues especially carries in his heart the image of Jesus so dear to him as a child and in the seminary. Once imprisoned it comes to him in the suffering of the people and in the night. It is this Jesus with whom he converses about his doubts, his questions and the choice he faces.

The high-pitched whine of the highly intelligent and informed inquisitor Inoue, with his polite manners and saccharine but sinister smile, do not mask his intent to break the resolve of the Christians. He challenges Rodrigues, as does Ferriera when he and Rodrigues finally meet, saying that Christianity is too Western and cannot adapt to Japan. Rodrigues says that the church is the source of truth and is unable to move off the script he learned growing up in Catholic Portugal. His responses to Inoue are noble perhaps, but ineffective. The inculturation of the Gospel and adaptation, even today, remains a challenge to those who evangelize, at home or afar.

Kichijiro, absolved again and again for his apostasy, is emblematic of sinners who are self-aware of their sin and just as cognizant of God's mercy. Kichijiro disgusts Rodrigues, and it takes the priest a long time to realize that he, too, is a weak human not so different from this dirty beggar of a sinner who cannot help himself.

On Dec. 5 Scorsese, along with members of the cast and crew, spoke to a packed audience after a screening of "Silence" at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. Days have passed, and I and my sister, Libby Weatherfield, cannot stop thinking about the film. The first thing Libby said, however, as the lights came up was, "Well, this isn't a crowd pleaser." In truth, it's not meant to be.

Even director George Lucas, who introduced the film, said, "The best way I can describe it to you is that it is interesting, because it is definitely a Martin Scorsese movie." Then he seemed to think about it a little more and said, "It's pretty extraordinary. It's one of those movies from the last century where we made all kinds of … independent, not mainstream movies. That he even got it made is a big deal. I hope you enjoy it. It's very emotional. And there's blood in it. It's Martin."

During the question-and-answer session after, Scorsese recounted his life growing up as a Roman Catholic in Manhattan and spending a year in a high school minor seminary from which he was invited to leave.

He spoke about making his 1988 film "The Last Temptation of Christ" and how people either hated it or loved it and that he spent a year going around the world either discussing or arguing about it. But there was an Episcopal priest in New York, Paul Moore, who didn't hate the film. He gave Scorsese Silence and suggested he read it. He put it aside for a year, but when in Japan in 1989 acting in the film "Dreams" for Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, Scorsese read Silence and determined to make it into a film.

Actor Andrew Garfield, who has described himself as Jewish, said that making "Silence" "transcended filmmaking" for him:

How do we show a man living a question on a movie screen, a man living in a prayer for two and a half hours? I gave myself a good year to immerse myself in all things Jesuit to understand what the word God means to me on a personal level and I made the Spiritual Exercises that St. Ignatius created, that are a rite of passage for Jesuits and members of the Catholic faith … and the idea of the active imagination. The Exercises create a transformative process in the person that makes them. Then I would talk to Marty, often at length, and we would always end up with five or six minutes of silence at the end of the conversation because we knew we had gotten as close to the core of the answer to the question possible yet we were so many light years away from the answer. He would say, 'Okay kid, until next time,' and we would never get beyond this. We would always go deeper and deeper yet further and further away from the answer. Preparing for this film was a profound journey in that way and that's the beauty and the agony of the book, the beauty and the agony of the story, the beauty and the agony of living a life of faith because it means living a life of doubt. It's the same thing as showing up on the film set every day, you have no idea of what you are doing and if you think you do, you are in trouble. What we see in all Marty's films, but in this film especially is that something deep and profound and transformative is happening in the film and within the audience absorbing it.

Adam Driver, who grew up in a Christian home, said that: "An anguished faith seemed to make sense to me. I don't know if it's because I was raised in a religious household but it's like any relationship with your parents or your kids. It's not as easy as making a decision and that's it. ... It is filled with doubt and second-guessing yourself; there's insecurity and misery. Getting ready for this I kept in mind St. Peter because this image made sense to me, as someone who is very committed but who cannot help but question and doubt every step of the way."

A man in the audience asked Scorsese, " 'The Last Temptation of Christ' and 'Silence' — in your art and mind where do these two films find each other?"

He replied, giving away part of the film's ending:

'The Last Temptation of Christ' took me to a certain point in my journey. It had to do with the Incarnation and my belief that Christ being fully divine, fully human and what this could mean. ... There seemed to be further to go [on that journey] after. But it's just isn't as simple as that. It's not a simple film and it's not a simple book. … But for myself, as a believer, unbeliever, doubter, have faith, not have faith, go through life, making mistakes, I don't know. Trying to make life better, to feel your way through to live in a better way for yourself and others primarily, 'The Last Temptation of Christ' didn't take me that far. ... I knew [ Silence ] was for me, at this point in my life, the beckoning, the call. It said, 'Figure me out,' or at least try to. ... I am not Thomas Merton, I'm not Dorothy Day… so you admire them and everything else but … how can you be like them? ... How do you live it in your daily life? That is to get to the essence, I think, for me, as a Roman Catholic, true Christianity. Because when [Fr. Rodrigues] does apostatize, he gives up anything he's proud of and he's got nothing left except service, except compassion. So, he gives up his religion, he gives up his faith in order to gain his faith. Wow. How do you do that? That's amazing. Could you do that?

For the original post at the National Catholic Reporter, please click here .

Reposted by permission of National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company, 115 E Armour Blvd, Kansas City, MO 64111 NCRonline.org.\

About the Author

Sister Rose is a Daughter of St. Paul, a media literacy education specialist, and the founding director of the Pauline Center for Media Studies in Culver City, CA where she teaches courses on media literacy for catechists and adults. A world traveler, she gives presentations and courses on media literacy around the globe. She has a BA in Liberal Arts with concentrations in catechetics and communications, an MEd in Media Studies from the Institute of Education, University of London, UK, and a Certificate in Pastoral Communication from the University of Dayton. She is an award winning author and co-author of books on film and scripture and media literacy education. Her most recent book is “Martin Sheen: Pilgrim on the Way” (2015).

Sr. Rose is an active member of  SIGNIS, the world Catholic association for communication  and president of Catholics in Media Associates in Los Angeles. She has also served on Catholic and ecumenical juries at the Venice, Locarno, Berlin and Newport film festivals as well as the Montreux television festival. 

Rose is the film columnist for St. Anthony Messenger and  the National Catholic Reporter,  reviews films for catechists and youth for RCLBenziger, hosts her own interview and review online show “The Industry with Sister Rose on the IN Network” and writes  “Sister Rose at the Movies” blog on Patheos . Rose has created courses and facilitates them for the University of Dayton’s online Virtual Learning Community.

Sr. Rose Pacatte is a proud member of the elite  Catholic Speakers Organization, C atholicSpeakers.com .

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Review: Questions and Prayers Go Unanswered in Scorsese’s ‘Silence’

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By Manohla Dargis

• Dec. 22, 2016

Martin Scorsese’s “Silence” is a story of faith and anguish. It tells of a Portuguese Jesuit priest, Father Rodrigues, who in 1643 heads into the dark heart of Japan, where Christians are being persecuted — boiled alive, immolated and crucified. Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) sets out to help keep the church alive in Japan, a mission that perhaps inevitably leads to God. The film’s solemnity is seductive — as is Mr. Scorsese’s art — especially in light of the triviality and primitiveness of many movies, even if its moments of greatness also make its failures seem more pronounced.

Mr. Scorsese’s work has long involved struggles of faith of one kind or another, from the religious guilt that afflicts Harvey Keitel’s thug in “Mean Streets” (“ You don’t make up for your sins in t he c hurch .”) through that circle of hell known as “The Wolf of Wall Street.” In “Silence” the struggle begins in a mist-wreathed landscape where severed human heads rest on a crude shelf, like trophies of some ghastly victory. Today, decapitations in the name of religion are a gruesome hallmark of Islamist extremists, but here they introduce a dispute involving the Japanese authorities, who, intent on maintaining the country’s power and isolation, are set on eradicating Christianity, its proselytizers and converts.

Figures soon emerge from the mist, notably Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), who, as gaunt and tormented as any martyred Caravaggio saint, watches in gaping horror as guards ladle water from hot springs on shrieking Christians. Rodrigues learns about this hellish scene from Father Valignano (Ciaran Hinds), who also relates that Ferreira has renounced his religion and is living as “a Japanese.” Rodrigues, having studied with Ferreira, refuses to accept that the older priest’s belief has been shattered and departs for Japan accompanied by another priest, Father Garupe ( a fine, underused Adam Driver ), and a Japanese guide, Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozuka, excellent).

The movie’s early scenes are filled with severe pictorial beauty as the pale thermal steam snaking around the martyred Christians gives way to the vaulted white room where the black-clothed Jesuits meet. The chromatic contrast between the inkiness of their cassocks and the room’s ascetic whiteness finds an echo in Rodrigues’s rigid dualism, a belief in absolutes that will be tested. His resoluteness even seems answered by the calm camerawork (no jitters here), which early on is dramatically punctuated by a ravishing overhead shot of the three Jesuit priests gliding down a flight of stony, bleach-white stairs, as if they were being looked down on from high above.

Whether this represents God’s vision or that of the priests, it is very much the point of view of the movie’s own creator. This overhead shot and others suggest that there’s a divine aspect to the priests’ mission, an idea that Mr. Scorsese visually and narratively underlines in the Lazarus-like cave in which Rodrigues and Garupe first take shelter in Japan; in Rodrigues’s self-aggrandizing identification with Jesus; and, crucially, through the figure of Judas. As in Mr. Scorsese’s 1988 film, “The Last Temptation of Christ,” his messy, excitingly alive adaptation of that Nikos Kazantzakis novel, Judas must play a part in “Silence” because without him there can be no Jesus.

Once in Japan, Rodrigues and Garupe make contact with a village of hidden Christians, who live in fear of the authorities and a cobralike smiler known as the Inquisitor, Inoue ( Issey Ogata , in one of the film’s strongest performances). By day, the priests hide in a small, cramped hut near the village; by night, they lead their new flock in dimly lighted rooms, delivering sermons in Latin, baptizing children and taking confession. Mr. Scorsese draws some modest, uneasy comedy from the linguistic and cultural differences between the priests and their congregation, as when a grabby, highly agitated woman begs the rather startled Garupe to hear her confession.

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‘Silence’ Review: Martin Scorsese’s Jesuit Drama Is a Religious Experience

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Is God dead – and if not, why does he appear to be deaf, blind and dumb in the face of human suffering? That’s a deep dive for any one movie, yet Martin Scorsese’s Silence fearlessly takes the plunge, emerging in a dizzying climb that offers frustratingly few answers but all the right questions. The filmmaker, raised Roman Catholic and inculcated in its rituals, has tackled the issue of faith before, both directly ( The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun ) and implicitly ( Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Cape Fear ), works in which belief erupts in bloodshed. This tale of Jesuit priests has been called Scorsese’s passion project – a misnomer, since this great American artist has yet to make a film he wasn’t passionate about. What’s meant here is that the 74-year-old director has been trying to get Silence on screen since the late Eighties, when he first read the 1966 novel by Shusaku Endo, a Japanese convert to Catholicism who found something profound in the story of Portuguese missionaries who risked their lives to bring the word of God to 17th-century Japan.

That’s the plot on which Scorsese pins the spiritual quest of his urgent, unforgettable movie. Andrew Garfield , his eyes alive with fervor, plays Father Sebastião Rodrigues. Adam Driver , his starved body resembling an ascetic saint, costars as Father Francisco Garupe. Through these fierce, fully committed performances, we journey east with the young priests in search of their missing mentor Father Cristovao Ferreira ( Liam Neeson ). Is he in hiding, executed or married and living in sin as a Buddhist? The last option fills them with dread. Inexperienced in the ways of religious persecution, Rodrigues and Garupe find Japan a shock to their system. The brutal feudal lords and ruling samurai are committed to flushing out hidden Christians, converts who can save themselves only by stepping on a fumie, a crudely carved image of Christ. Resistance can result in drowning, burning, crucifixion or being cut, hung upside down over a pit and slowly bled to death. Scorsese, who wrote the script with Jay Cocks ( The Age of Innocence ), doesn’t wallow in these violent visuals, using them only to reflect the horror of priests who are told that by trampling on a fumie themselves they can save the lives of others.

The introduction of doubt, especially in Rodrigues, is a theme that propels the film, two hours and forty minutes of challenging spirituality that won’t be easy to sell to a popular audience wary of stepping outside the Marvel Comic Universe. Scorsese is daring us to examine our own feelings about faith and redemption. Neeson, who opens up his character fully in the film’s final third, is remarkable at showing how Father Ferreira reconciles conviction and doubt about a God who chooses to suffer with mankind instead of ending its suffering. Shot in Taiwan with a poet’s eye by the gifted Rodrigo Prieto ( The Wolf of Wall Street ), the film Is a technical and soulful marvel. If you want proof that editing can be an art form, watch what longtime Scorsese collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker does with the arrangement of images that provoke thoughtful debate.

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All the performances are first-rate, with particular praise due the Japanese actors. Yosuke Kubozuka is outstanding as Kichijiro, a Judas figure who wants to help the priests but continuously betrays them to save his own skin. There is well-deserved Oscar buzz for the brilliant Issey Ogata as Inoue, the villainous Inquisitor whose sly wit speaks to the political side of his spiritual decisions. It’s Inoue who orders the crucifixion of three Christian villagers on a beach, each choking back water as the tide comes in. Like many scenes in Silence, this one is filled with beauty and terror, addressing a silent God against an exquisite background of nature that asserts the existence of a higher power.

At times Garfield’s beleaguered priest hears Christ talking through him: “Trample. It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world.” Is it delusion, compassion or self-justification? Scorsese has said that Silence is “about the necessity of belief fighting the voice of experience.” There is no doubting the film’s relevance to a modern world in which fundamentalism and religious extremism are on the rise. Scorsese, with a rigorous fix on the complexity of his subject, refuses to temper the film’s harshness with sermonizing or sentiment. Heaven and hell, brute nature and healing grace all have a place in forging faith as Scorsese sees it.

Sure, he’s overreaching. Most visionaries do. The fate of this film will depend on what it does or doesn’t open up in you. The issues it raises aren’t meant to go down easy. But no one with a genuine belief in the possibilities and mysteries of cinema would think of missing Silence. It’s essential filmmaking from the church of Scorsese, a modern master who lives and breathes in the images he puts on screen.

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"Silence" is a monumental work, and a punishing one. It puts you through hell with no promise of enlightenment, only a set of questions and propositions, sensations and experiences.

It is no surprise to learn that the film's director, Martin Scorsese , has been working on it for decades, since he first read the 1966  source novel   by Shûsaku Endô about Jesuit priests suffering for their faith in 17th century Japan, where Christianity is outlawed. I can't think of another Scorsese film that's so intent on simply showing us things and letting us consider their meaning. There's a little bit of voiceover narration and a few shots that go inside characters' perceptions, but for the most part you're an observer, watching people from a purposeful distance. The film starts with a long moment of actual silence, and embraces silence throughout its running time, or something akin to silence. Wood burning, waves crashing, wind moving through grass: this is what you often hear in place of a musical score. When "Silence" is not quiet, you wish that it were, because the soundtrack is filled with moans of pain and screams of agony and the sounds of bones being broken and flame searing flesh. And, of course, during such moments you fear silence, too, because the grave is silent.

The story is simple: two priests ( Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver ) leave Portugal for Japan to find a third priest ( Liam Neeson ) who has gone missing while working as a missionary. The third priest is believed to have committed apostasy by stepping on an image of Jesus Christ after being tormented by the Japanese. Eventually, one of these wandering priests—Garfield's character, Father Sebastião Rodrigues—gets captured and goes through a similar experience, surviving torture and witnessing the torture of others while pondering unanswerable questions: How much suffering can a man take before breaking and renouncing that which is most important to him? If he does break, does it mean he has failed God? Does God want him to resist blasphemy no matter what the cost? Or does he want the priest to give up and renounce his faith, secure in the knowledge that God's love is great enough to forgive him for not being able to endure unendurable pain? Is God indifferent to the suffering? Does He even notice it?

The movie starts with the first priest, Father Cristóvão Ferreira (Neeson), witnessing mass torture of Christians and being told that if he will only commit apostasy, the suffering will cease. The story then jumps forward many years to find Father Rodrigues and his partner, Father Francisco Garrpe (Adam Driver), as they make their way to Japan by way of Macao (with help from a Japanese Christian whose own faith seems reawakened by serving as their guide). The first hour of the film is a somewhat picaresque narrative that slowly builds dread as the priests get closer to figuring out what happened their predecessor. The Japanese authorities don't take kindly to Europeans wandering around their island nation talking about the glories of Jesus. In fact, they see Christianity as a cancer to be cut from the body politic.

In the film's second half, Father Rodrigues finds himself locked in a wooden cage and forced to watch and hear the torture of Japanese Christians—some of whom followed and helped him. He is plagued by doubts, not just about the wisdom of coming to Japan or his capacity to survive this ordeal, but the wisdom of the missionary enterprise, which expects people to suffer and die on behalf of ideals. The priest even begins to wonder what God wants, what He's thinking, and whether He has a point-of-view on misery and pain.

What would Jesus do? A lot of people in Father Rodrigues' position would interpret that as a physical challenge:  if Christ withstood the agonies of the cross, I can get through this.  But Christ wasn't mortal, so it's an unfair test. But what if the unfairness of the test is the test? And what of the other prisoners in the facility with the priest? All it would take to end their suffering—or so the priest is told—is one footprint on the image of the savior. Is it moral to allow others to suffer when their suffering can be ended with a single symbolic gesture? Would God want that? Maybe the priest is destined to realize that it’s all right to apostatize if it ends the pain of others. 

Scorsese and his co-screenwriter Jay Cocks —the two did uncredited rewrites on " The Last Temptation of Christ "—have been accused by some of my colleagues of glorifying the European missionaries, or at least not examining them in a critical enough way. I didn’t get this out of “Silence” at all. In fact, one of the things that impressed me most about it was the care it devotes to understanding the position of the Japanese authorities. Without condoning their brutality, it lets a major character—Inoue Masashige ( Issei Ogata ), one of the officials in charge of eradicating Christianity from Japan, and the supervisor of the hero’s suffering—explain the official point-of-view on Western religion. He doesn’t just consider it a corrupting influence on Japanese culture, he doubts that Christianity can truly take root in the “swamp” (his word) of his home country. There are echoes here of another recurring Scorsese fascination, the self-preservation instinct of the tribe. The tribe may tolerate rebellion, heresy or external threats up to a point, but after that they crack down mercilessly. 

Scorsese's respectful distance makes the suffering more unbearable than it would be if he showed every atrocity in close-up. It's unsettling because it conflates the point-of-view of God and the point-of-view of the audience. You're paralyzed. You want to act, or you want the movie to act, to stop the suffering, but the suffering continues until finally it doesn't. We're watching men of God being tested. Try as they might, they cannot entirely wrap their minds around the purpose of the test, and when they do grapple with it, they worry that they've arrived at the wrong conclusion. They worry that they’ve missed the point; that they're not faithful enough or smart enough to understand why this horror exists, or must exist. I don’t know what to think of the ending of the film, which I won’t discuss here except to say that I’ve changed my mind about it many times, and that it seems to be constructed to encourage viewers to come at it again from new angles rather than settling on a single conclusion. This is not the sort of film you “like” or “don't like.” It's a film that you experience and then live with. 

Scorsese has been here before, in one sense or another—not just in straightforwardly theological dramas such as " Kundun " and "The Last Temptation of Christ," but in his crime pictures and thrillers as well. The entire running time of "Silence" could be the self-flagellating fantasy of the young hoodlum hero of Scorsese's 1973 breakthrough " Mean Streets " as he holds his hand over a flame (the title character in " Taxi Driver " did the same thing), and the terrors visited upon the priests and their flock are sadistic enough to have come straight from the reptile brain of Max Cady in " Cape Fear ," a devil or demon figure who exists to punish people for the sins of weakness, hypocrisy and pride. But "Silence" foregrounds such things in the manner of a parable that is not intended to lead the listener to a single realization but to stimulate thought and emotion.

This, too, is characteristic of Scorsese, who studied to be a priest but became a monk for cinema, and who nonchalantly describes himself as a "lapsed Catholic" yet has been preoccupied with sin and salvation for nearly 50 years and weaves Christian themes, imagery and situations throughout his work. You even find them in what might otherwise be straightforward commercial genre projects—"Cape Fear," " The Departed " and " The Color of Money " spring to mind—in which Scorsese seems to be using theology to frame his story and characters in ways that he understands, maybe as a way of personalizing a story that's not all that personal otherwise. For a lapsed Catholic he sure does see the entire world in terms of imponderables and spiritual tests. Maybe there’s an alternate reality in which Scorsese became a priest. I bet he was a good one.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

Silence (2016)

Rated R for some disturbing violent content.

161 minutes

Andrew Garfield as Father Sebastião Rodrigues

Adam Driver as Father Francisco Garrpe

Liam Neeson as Father Cristóvão Ferreira

Ciarán Hinds as Father Valignano

Issei Ogata as Inoue

Tadanobu Asano as Interpreter

Shinya Tsukamoto as Mokichi

• Martin Scorsese

Writer (based on the novel by)

• Shûsaku Endô

Cinematographer

• Rodrigo Prieto
• Thelma Schoonmaker
• Kathryn Kluge
• Kim Allen Kluge

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Review by Brian Eggert January 9, 2017

Martin Scorsese meditates on questions of Catholic belief and apostasy in Silence , an adaptation of Japanese author Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel of the same name. Scorsese’s long-in-development passion project engages religious subject matter without artistic compromise or consideration of the film’s commercial prospects, asking questions about the contradictions of faith within a punishing historical environment. The picture recalls the work of Ingmar Bergman, most notably The Seventh Seal (1957), in which God remains mute in the face of desperate appeals from the protagonist, a Medieval knight. However, the outcome settles on a far less pleasant note, resolving, as one might expect from Scorsese, that suffering breeds understanding. There’s no question that Silence is a profoundly personal film for Scorsese, completing the director’s spiritual trilogy, after The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and his underappreciated Kundun (1997). And like those films, many will find his latest to be uncommonly restrained, ruminative, and perhaps even impenetrable.

When Scorsese visited Japan to shoot scenes as Vincent Van Gogh in Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (1990), he had the idea to adapt Endo’s novel, which had been adapted in 1971 by Japanese director Masahiro Shinoda. Scorsese had just released his controversial The Last Temptation of Christ , and the Roman Catholic author’s text must have seemed very familiar, containing many pointedly Catholic themes, which the director had explored in previous features from Mean Streets (1973) onward. After the idea to adapt Silence was born, Scorsese worked alongside scripter Jay Cocks, his writing partner on The Age of Innocence (1993) and Gangs of New York (2002), to realize his version on the screen. It comes as a somewhat ironic revelation that Scorsese finally began production after his last release, the bacchanal dark comedy The Wolf of Wall Street .

Silence takes place in seventeenth-century Japan where signs of Christianity remain after Japanese officials have suddenly banned the religion, despite decades of acceptance. After a religious cleansing in which thousands of Catholics die, so-called Kirishtans linger in rural villages and huts across the Japanese countryside, suffering interrogation and persecution from a local inquisitor named Inoue (Issey Ogata). Among those hunted, Jesuit priests willingly embrace torture by boiling water and crucifixion so they might better identify with Christ. Among them is Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), who goes missing and, according to rumor, has apostatized (renounced Christianity in a public forum by stepping on an image of Jesus or the Madonna) to live a quiet life as a Japanese citizen. When word of Ferreira’s fate reaches the Portuguese colony of Macau, Ferreira’s students Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Garrpe (Adam Driver) venture into Japan to locate their mentor.

Early on, the priests approach fog-laden shores, and Scorsese seems to evoke Apocalypse Now (1979). Clouds of mist and fog shroud the landscape, where Rodrigues and Garrpe are greeted by farmers who see the Jesuits as living proof that God is listening. Rodrigues insists on pushing forward after Ferreira, the film’s resident Col. Kurtz, and soon welcomes the idea of martyrdom—if only because it might mean that God speaks to him. Indeed, Rodrigues and Garrpe endure no end of desperate living on the Catholic underground, witnessing the hellish interrogation and death of several devoted followers. The worse it gets, the more Rodrigues sees mirage-like visions of Christ before him, painterly images that he seems to draw from his memory. And despite the extreme degree of suffering the Jesuits experience, God remains hushed. Elsewhere, Rodrigues falls prey to his pride and links himself to Christ, complete with his very own Judas in Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozuka), a peasant who betrays Rodrigues to officials several times over, only to beg for forgiveness. At the same time, Inoue becomes equivalent to Pontius Pilate, an unbending, frustrated official who subjects a willing and prideful Rodrigues to horrific, albeit indirect tortures.

From a purely aesthetic perspective, Scorsese’s treatment echoes Kurosawa and Bergman, in that the director’s longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker probably had far fewer cuts to make than any other Scorsese film in a decade. His camera work, captured by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto in a rare rural Taiwan shoot, sprawls across the landscape in long, pensive takes. Along with the film’s scarcity of non-diegetic music, Silence contains a sobering, searching tone. It’s an elegant and relentlessly severe approach, coupled with impressive performances from Driver and Neeson, both of whom, at their worst, appear stripped-down and downright skeletal in their roles. Garfield, however, carries too modern a personality and mannerism; he’s decidedly ill-suited for a film set in the 1670s. (Example: His hair somehow remains voluminous and picture-ready, whereas Driver and Neeson seem to have the appropriate level of greasiness and filth).

With a two-hour-and-forty-minute runtime, Silence may feel like an intellectual chore, especially for those unversed in deliberately paced, faith-questioning cinema by filmmakers like Bergman, Malick, or Robert Bresson. For viewers who have faith or even question their beliefs, as Scorsese often does, the film has the potential to be a profound, deeply thoughtful, and resonating experience. Rodrigues’ desire to connect with Christ by subjecting himself to undue suffering brings about several compelling paradoxes. Why continue to force his own misery without some sort of answer to his pleas? “I pray but I’m lost. Am I just praying to silence?” he asks. For those without faith, the film may be difficult to connect with—and Ferreira’s later remarks about the earthly realm may seem appealingly logical next to Rodrigues’ often extreme, dogged faith in the first two-thirds. No matter what you believe, Scorsese’s film tests its audience with a picture that maintains an uncompromising austerity toward its purpose, yet it proves easier to appreciate than enjoy.

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Home > Fighting the Culture War > Why Catholics Cannot be Silent about Scorsese’s ‘Silence’

Why Catholics Cannot be Silent about Scorsese’s ‘Silence’

The modern world has a problem with martyrs. People cannot understand the glory of their witness for Christ. Modern man would rather try to find some justification behind the anguished decision of those who deny the Faith.

Such is the case of Martin Scorsese’s latest film “Silence.” It is a tale about this second category of non-martyrs — of whom Our Lord said: “But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 10:33).

Curiously, early reviews of “Silence,” have been negative—even by liberal media hostile to the Church. The consensus is that Scorsese’s attempt to propose for general admiration one who outwardly denied the Faith has fallen flat.

Perhaps it is because human nature finds such denials distasteful. Even the director’s talents, Hollywood special effects and media publicity cannot overcome it. Scorsese’s tortuous attempt to justify his tormented protagonist proves tedious and unconvincing.

Hollywood’s Teaching Authority

“Silence” is based on a 1966 novel of the same name by the Japanese author Shusaku Endo . The plot revolves around the fictional character of a Portuguese Jesuit priest in seventeenth century Japan at the time of a violent anti-Catholic persecution. The film represents a “struggle of faith” in which the priest must choose between the lives of his flock and his Faith. In the face of his trials, he finds God is silent to his entreaties, hence the film’s title. Finally, Christ Himself supposedly breaks the silence by interiorly telling the priest that he might outwardly deny the Faith by trampling upon His image to save his flock. Such a shallow story so contrary to all Church teaching would usually pose no threat to Catholics who are firm in their Faith. However, Hollywood has tragically assumed the role of a teaching authority to countless American Catholics. Thus, the principal lesson taught by the film—that outwardly denying the Faith can sometimes be justified and even desired by God—does pose a danger to the many uncatechized that might mistake Hollywood script for Scriptures. Any silence about “Silence” might be misconstrued as consent.

It is not the case to review the film or explore its convoluted plot and subplots. Such films are nothing new; they are simply means to reinforce certain false premises that undermine the Faith. It is far better to address the false premises themselves and, especially as it applies to modernity’s woeful misunderstanding of martyrdom.

Martyrdom Is Not Defeat

The first false premise is the modern assumption that life is the supreme value. This is a terrible premise since if there are no values worth dying for then there is no real reason worth living for. In a materialistic world that adores life and its enjoyment, martyrdom represents failure. Those who renounce the Faith and martyrdom are winners. Those who don’t are losers.

The message of fictional accounts like “Silence,” is that life is to be worshipped to such extent that even God must be made complicit in inspiring the apostasy that saves the lives of the faithful. However, such accounts are indeed fiction; they ignore the historical reality of what happened.

A Denial of the Historical Record

The historic record of the Japanese martyrs is one of the most glorious in Church history. It is a burning rebuke of modernity’s idolization of life. Tens of thousands suffered or died at the hands of cruel executioners. If tales are needed to inspire authors, let writers tell of the courage, heroism and constancy of these Japanese martyrs, young and old, male and female, religious and secular, who joyfully gave their lives for Christ and earned for themselves the crown of eternal glory. If villains need be found for their stories, let them find them in the cruel governors and judges who condemned the Christians to death.

In 1776, Saint Alphonsus de Liguori wrote the book, The Victories of the Martyrs , which has one large section that tells incredible stories of the Japanese martyrs. He speaks of a Japanese Christian named Ursula, for example, who upon seeing her husband and two young children martyred, cried out: “Be Thou praised, O My God! For having rendered me worthy to be present at this sacrifice, now grant me the grace to have a share in their crown!” She and her youngest daughter were then beheaded.

Indeed, any priest who would renounce his Faith to save the lives of his flock would be reviled by the Japanese faithful for both his denial and depriving the flock of the crown of martyrdom.

If there is any silence in Scorcese’s “Silence,” it is that silence which ignores the dauntless courage and supernatural joy found in the Japanese martyrs and missionaries whose witness was so superior that their enemies were defeated by their arguments and resorted to killing them. Their martyrdom was their victory, not their defeat.

Acts Have Meaning

A second premise is that outward acts have no meaning, or can  mean whatever the person determines them to be. Such a premise is typical of postmodern thought that would “deconstruct” acts from their natural meaning and context.

Thus, any benefit or inspiration can justify an act that signifies the denial of the Faith, since acts have no fixed meaning. Indeed, the theme of the film shrouds the outward denial with the good intentions of the protagonist’s concern for the safety of his flock.

Again, this shows a profound misunderstanding of the idea of martyrdom. The word martyr itself means witness—an external manifestation of Faith to others. The postmodern interpretation of the martyr’s dilemma questions the notion that there can be witnesses that are so firmly convinced of the truths of the Catholic religion that they gladly suffer death rather than deny it. The “meta-narrative” of the great deeds of the martyrs is no longer valued. Even the idea of truth is relative. All must be reduced to the level of personal experience.

Again, such an interpretation runs contrary to the historical reality that was centered on the notion of objective truth. Those who persecute the Church hate this truth and the moral law taught by Christ and His Church. They especially hate the public witness given by Christians because this witness denounces them for their sins and wickedness. All they asked of their victims was an outward sign of denial. For this reason, persecutors often preferred to force Christians to deny the Faith than to take their lives.

Historically, that is why those who persecute the Church are always willing to offer honors, offices and benefits to those who renounce the Faith. They will always give Christians an excuse to stop being witnesses. This includes those “good intentions” to diminish the sufferings of family, relatives and fellow Christians. However, this is only a pretext. Indeed, what they want to destroy is the witness that haunts them and calls them to virtue. They want renegade Christians to make their denial public to discourage the witness of others.

Thankfully, their efforts are often frustrated by the constancy of faithful Christians that moves others to conversion. They do not understand Tertullian’s encomium that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church,” ( Apologeticus , Ch. 50).

The God of Silence

The final false premise comes from a naturalistic understanding of the world in which people do not grasp how God works in souls. The secular world assumes God’s natural position is one of silence. When secular writers are forced to imagine the action of God upon their characters, they portray it as a purely personal matter based on feelings and emotions inconsistent and outside the logic of divine law.

This is perhaps the greatest misunderstanding of the Faith. Modern authors create their own god of silence and believers outside of the life of grace.

Such a combination leads to absurd characterizations like that of “Silence.” Martyrdom cannot be based on emotion or feeling since it involves surrendering man’s greatest natural gift—life. This is something so difficult that it is beyond human strength to achieve. Martyrdom must entail grace, which enlightens the intellect and strengthens the will to allow Christians to do that which is beyond human nature. God’s grace would never allow a person to deny Christ before men.

Martyrdom—The Fruit of Grace

That is why Saint Alphonsus states that it is a matter of Faith that, “Martyrs are indebted for their crown to the power of the grace which they received from Jesus Christ; for he it is that gave them the strength to despise all the promises and all the threats of tyrants and to endure all the torments till they had made an entire sacrifice of their lives.”

Saint Augustine further states that the merits of the martyrs lie in being the effects of God’s grace and their cooperation with grace.

In other words, God cannot be silent in the face of martyrdom as Scorcese’s “Silence” film affirms. His justice will not allow a person to be tempted beyond their capacity to resist. He is intimately involved in those facing martyrdom. He gives them grace—a created participation in divine life itself. Facing martyrdom without grace is impossible. While God may allow for trials, He is never silent.

Catholics Cannot Remain Silent

And that is why faithful Catholics cannot remain silent in the face of Scorcese’s “Silence.” Scorcese’s film is a tragic denial of God’s grace in a world in dire need of it. In these days when Catholics are being martyred, Catholics need to know that God is never silent. They will never be put in a situation where God betrays Himself. He will always be there when needed.

The secular worldview is so narrow-minded and asphyxiating, but alas so prevalent. Today’s obsession with self permeates the culture to the exclusion of God. It is little wonder that so many would think there is “silence” on the other side of martyrdom. It is largely because they find emptiness in their own lives. They cannot imagine the action of God and His grace.

Amid the frenetic intemperance of the times, the agitated crowds ironically do not seek out God where He is always found—in the silence of their own souls.

Related Articles:

Reviewed by: Jeremy Landes CONTRIBUTOR

Crisis of faith

Who is Shūsaku Endō? Author of the novel on which this film is based, a Japanese Roman Catholic who died in 1996.

Who was Cristóvão Ferreira? An apostate Portuguese Catholic priest and Jesuit missionary. See Wikipedia article

Who is Giuseppe Chiara? An Italian Jesuit missionary, born in Spain, active in 17th century Japan, arrested in May 1643, died August 24, 1985. He was the historical basis for the character Sebastião Rodrigues in “Silence.”

religious persecution and discrimination

lying and committing apostasy inorder to survive and/or help others survive, while keeping faith in private

compare martyrdom to eternal life and eternal death

hidden Christians in countries of extreme persecution

Will all mankind eventually be saved? Answer

What is a martyr? Answer

MISSIONARIES—Why send missionaries to other lands? Answer

MISSIONARIES—How can I pray for my missionary? Answer

How can followers of Christ best pray for Muslims? Answer

STORY ABOUT PRAYER— Hindus Pray to Jesus for their dead daughter

How can we know there’s a God? Answer

What if the cosmos is all that there is? Answer

If God made everything, who made God? Answer

Is Jesus Christ God? Answer

about Roman Catholicism

Jesuit priests

Why does God allow innocent people to suffer? Answer

What about the issue of suffering? Doesn’t this prove that there is no God and that we are on our own? Answer

Does God feel our pain? Answer

ORIGIN OF BAD —How did bad things come about? Answer

Did God make the world the way it is now? What kind of world would you create? Answer

WHY PRAY?—What’s the point of praying? Answer

D uring the 1600s, Japanese authorities cracked down on their people who confessed Christ as their Lord . It became illegal for Europeans to share their faith , and many people were killed because they would not back down from trusting Jesus, despite the heavy persecution .

“Silence” is the fictional story of two Jesuit priests from Portugal, Garrpe and Rodrigues ( Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield ), who dare to venture into Japan because one of their mentors, a priest/missionary named Ferreira ( Liam Neeson ) stopped writing home years ago and has reportedly recanted his faith to live as one of the Japanese. The younger priests set out to find and rescue him, in one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a believer.

While millions of people flocked to see Jesus suffering a violent death in “ The Passion of the Christ ” and were inspired by Jesus’ courage and sacrifice for humanity, Martin Scorsese ’s “Silence” frames suffering for your faith in a different light. What if your choice to proclaim Christ and guide other people toward eternal salvation brings down the government’s wrath on new believers and their families? Could you justify allowing other people to suffer because you don’t want to risk your own damnation for dishonoring God?

A New Testament verse says, “If you deny Me (Jesus) before men, then I will deny you before the Father.” In this movie, priests and their persecuted Japanese followers are constantly being asked to choose between loyalty to the government or dishonoring God—symbolized by placing their foot upon an image depicting Jesus or spitting on a cross. When the Japanese refuse to yield, they are tortured in terrible ways, until death finally comes.

I will never forget the images of people slowly bleeding to death while hanging upside down or drowning over the course of several days, while they’re tied naked to crosses amidst the ocean’s waves beating down on them. Personally, I work for an organization that sends Christians to the world’s most dangerous countries, so that people can hear about Jesus for the first time and believe in Him. The risks for new believers can be very high, and I’ve learned about many people who have been killed because they would not forsake Jesus. Watching “Silence,” I was sobered by the fear that Christians felt and also the hope in their eyes while receiving Communion or baptism.

PERSECUTION —Why and how should we pray for suffering Christians? Answer

The movie doesn’t try to send a simplistic message, like, “Missionaries are ultimately responsible for persecution, so people would be better off if they stayed home.” But neither is the message simply, “Jesus is worth any and all suffering—His power overcomes everything.” The “silence,” referenced to by the movie’s title, probably represents many people’s experience when they cry out to God for help and aren’t able to hear Him answer. Many Christians will say they’ve never heard God speak to them audibly, and others may say He stopped speaking when the Bible was finished. Still others could come away from watching a movie like “Silence” concluding there is no God because, if He did exist and was as good as churches say He is, then He would do something to stop human suffering.

Why aren’t my prayers answered? Answer

fear of the Lord

Why should humans give thanks to their Creator? What does the Bible say about it? Answer

The movie’s characters ask, “What does God want from me? Theological devotion to the Church or love for my fellow men?” As someone who’s part of the evangelical strain of 21st century believers, I struggled while watching this movie because the young priests led the underground church in Japan using Latin, which I doubt their listeners understood, and their followers also voraciously received tiny symbols of their faith, like rosary beads, as if they had divine power. I’m certain some of the practices in my own church would make believers 400 years ago very uncomfortable, too, so I won’t point my finger in judgment. Seeing this film, though, you may also have some concerns about the doctrine the priests attempt to deliver to the Japanese.

Americans viewers are also accustomed to watching a hero struggle, suffer, persevere, and eventually succeed in his or her quest as a changed person. However, the journey of Rodrigues, in particular, seems quite different, because he enters Japan confident in his faith and ready to let God use his life, but everything he thinks he knows about God and himself gets slowly stripped away until he understands what Jesus felt when He cried out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” You may not agree with the choices this character makes or the kind of death he chooses to endure, but you may be able to empathize.

This is not a movie designed to entertain someone who wants to watch movie stars like Liam Neeson and Andrew Garfield (of “The Amazing Spider-Man” fame) win a victory for faith in Japan. It is sad, intense, and brutal . People who are not yet strong in their faith likely aren’t going to gain a lot from seeing the film, either. This movie is like a wrestling match, in which someone who thinks he’s an authority on God faces his own sin , doubts, failures, as well as the weaknesses of others, coming out the other side to find… well, I won’t ruin everything.

This is one of the most challenging films about faith I have ever seen, and I’m still struggling with questions it raised. If you go, be prepared to come back to the Lord and His Word with questions the movie raises for you. Hopefully, the Spirit inside you will not seem silent, but you’ll receive both comfort and conviction of sin . This is a unique movie that demands a lot of thought, and not everyone will be ready for it. Its violence is terrible.

Violence: Extreme / Profanity: None / Nudity: Moderate—loincloths, shirtless men, no sex

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers .

“…If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on their forehead or on their hand, they, too, will drink the wine of God’s fury…” — Revelation 14:9-10

PLEASE share your observations and insights to be posted here.

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Movie Review: Silence

A few weekends ago, my husband noticed the movie Silence while browsing Amazon Prime. I remembered hearing about this 2016 film telling the story of Jesuit missionaries in Japan. It is directed by Martin Scorsese and listed a promising cast, so we decided to spend a Sunday afternoon watching it.

The film is based on a novel of the same name by Shūsaku Endō. Set in the 17th century, it tells the story of two Portuguese Jesuit priests (played by Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) who set out for Japan in search of their mentor (played by Liam Neeson) who is rumored to have apostatized in the face of persecution.

At a port in China, they are introduced to Molkichi, a recluse of questionable trustworthiness, who will help them secretly enter Japan and meet the Christian community. 

Upon arriving in Japan, the two priests are treated as celebrities. Having gone an extended period of time without the Sacraments, the Japanese Christians are deliriously overjoyed at the arrival of the missionaries.  

The joy of the priests at being able to serve the clandestine Christians is tempered by long hours of hiding in a remote shack and dangerous travel. Soon they realize that their presence is putting the Christian communities at risk. As they witness the torture of their flock, their own faith is challenged.

The missionaries wrestle with the question of God’s seeming silence. Has he abandoned His people?

“Already twenty years have passed since the persecution broke out; the black soil of Japan has been filled with the lament of so many Christians; the red blood of priests has flowed profusely; the walls of churches have fallen down; and in the face of this terrible and merciless sacrifice offered up to Him, God has remained silent.” (Shūsaku Endō, Silence )

What I appreciated

Silence is a cinematographic masterpiece. There are a number of stunning nature scenes. The acting and directing are excellent. The use of lighting is superb. 

One particularly touching moment is when Padre Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) is celebrating Mass for the clandestine Christians. The sunlight peeking through the cracks fills the room. When the priest raises the host at the Consecration in front of the faithful who are attending Mass for the first time in perhaps years, my eyes filled with tears. Can I even begin to imagine their joy?

As a missionary myself, I could relate to the early zeal—and naiveté—of the young missionaries, unable to fathom the challenges that awaited them. While their desire to enter Japan was primarily to search for their mentor Padre Ferreira, they quickly fell in love with the Japanese people and desired to serve them, even putting their personal safety at risk.

I was touched by the simple, yet strong, faith of the peasant Christians and reminded of my own encounters with the simple faithful. Throughout the movie, they speak of paradise and are bolstered by the hope of heaven in the midst of brutal persecution.

When one Christian community is discovered by the government officials, three of the leaders refuse to trample on an image of Christ and deny their faith, leading to their execution. They go to their martyrdom in a manner that only men supported by God’s grace could.

God’s mercy is a theme throughout the film, particularly through the Sacrament of Confession. The first scene of Mokichi’s confession to Padre Rodrigues is particularly moving. Mokichi has need of repentance and confession over and over again, and Rodrigues offers absolution, even when the grievance hits the priest personally.

The film does not sugarcoat missionary life. Though the choices of some of the characters are questionable, the reality of what persecution and torture can do to a soul is not hidden. No one—not even a priest or missionary—is exempt from temptation, and even failure. Human nature is weak, and the movie is a stark reminder of that.

What I disliked

This is not a movie with a happy ending. In fact, it left me disappointed. The book on which the movie is based takes its plot from real-life events, so I don’t doubt the realism, at least in part. However, the ending feels inconsistent with the character development throughout the rest of the movie.

We finished the movie feeling sad. I had a pit in my stomach throughout much of it. After 2 hours and 40 minutes of a slow-paced film, I hoped to at least be left inspired, not drained.

That being said, my husband and I continued to discuss it throughout the day. It prompted some great conversation. Even if the characters’ actions left me wishing things had gone differently, I don’t regret the time I spent watching it.

This film is raw and thought-provoking. It provides a glimpse into the fortitude of persecuted Christian and the challenges of mission work in an anti-Christian country. It highlights the deep faith of the Japanese Christians and reminds us of the frailty of human nature. 

The story stirred in my own heart a greater appreciation for the access we have to the Sacraments, and reminded me that I need God’s grace to remain faithful. It prompted me to pray for missionaries and persecuted Christians around the world.

While it’s not a “pop some popcorn and relax” type of film, it is one that we as Christians and missionaries shouldn’t be afraid to watch and discuss.

The film is rated R due to the violence portrayed. It is as one would expect for a movie about persecution. There are some graphic scenes, including a beheading. Viewer discretion is advised.

Big Woods Office

Cate broadbent.

Tags: catholic church , evangelization , missionary

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Silence ends Martin Scorsese's decades-long creative quest with a thoughtful, emotionally resonant look at spirituality and human nature that stands among the director's finest works.

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Movie Review: ‘Silence’

  By John Mulderig

Catholic News Service

NEW YORK – Directed and co-written (with Jay Cocks) by Martin Scorsese, “Silence” (Paramount) is a dramatically powerful but theologically complex work best suited to viewers who come to the multiplex prepared to engage with serious issues.

Those willing to make such an intellectual investment, however, will find themselves richly rewarded.

In adapting Catholic author Shusaku Endo’s 1966 fact-based historical novel, a project in the works since the late 1980s, Scorsese finds himself in what might be called Graham Greene territory. As fans of that British novelist know, he had a fondness for stretching and twisting fundamental issues of faith and morality, and Endo’s plot shows the same tendency. So this is also not a film for the poorly catechized.

The movie’s primary setting is 17th-century Japan, where persecution is raging against the previously tolerated Christian community.

Shocked by rumors that Christavao Ferreira (Liam Neeson), their mentor in the priesthood, has renounced the faith under torture, two of his fellow Jesuits, Sebastian Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garrpe (Adam Driver), volunteer to leave the safety of Europe for the perils of the Land of the Rising Sun. Their twin goals are to find their role model and to minister to the underground Japanese church.

What follows is a long, sometimes harrowing battle between doubt and human frailty on the one hand and fidelity on the other. Earthly compassion is set against faithfulness and an eternal perspective, with both divine and human silence contributing to the appropriateness of the title.

Scorsese has crafted an often visually striking drama that’s also deeply thought-provoking and emotionally gripping. And the performances are remarkable all around. But the paradoxes of the narrative demand careful sifting by mature moviegoers well-grounded in their beliefs.

Those lacking such a foundation could be led astray, drawing the conclusion that mercy toward the suffering of others can sometimes justify sin. While Catholics who are blessed with the freedom to practice their faith in peace are hardly in a position to judge those facing martyrdom, the principle that circumstances can mitigate guilt but not transform wrong into right remains universally valid.

In the end, “Silence” movingly vindicates a certain form of constancy. That may, in a roundabout way, match the historical record: There is edifying, though inconclusive, evidence that the real person behind one of the three main characters in the picture not only rejected his previous apostasy, but ultimately surrendered his life for the faith.

The film contains religious themes requiring mature discernment, much violence, including scenes of gruesome torture and a brutal, gory execution, as well as rear and partial nudity. The Catholic News Service classification is L – limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R – restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Mulderig is on the staff of Catholic News Service.

Copyright ©2016 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.  

The Catholic Review is the official publication of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

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Christian persecution, religious freedom explored in 'silence' (movie review), film review: silence, directed by martin scorsese.

" Religious Freedom Day " is observed each year on January 16.

This year, perhaps surprisingly, Hollywood has given us a reminder of why the principle of religious freedom is so important — to avoid the persecution of religious dissenters that has stained so much of world history.

Based on the 1966 novel  by Shusaku Endo, director Martin Scorsese's new film Silence takes place in 17 th-century Japan. Although fictional, the story is based on some real characters and rooted in an actual historical epoch — the time of the " Kakure Kirishitan ," or "hidden Christians."

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Catholic missionaries were the first to bring Christianity to Japan , arriving in 1549. They and their successors had significant success in the following decades in converting many Japanese. Later in that century and early in the next, however, Japan's rulers became more hostile to Christianity, eventually cracking down with harsh persecution that drove the remaining Christians to practice their faith only in secret.

The film seems to reverse a number of modern stereotypes. Contemporary Western secularists are fond of depicting Christians as persecutors, and missionaries as colonizing zealots intent on wiping out indigenous cultures. In Silence , however, the humble minority of Christians are clearly the victims of the brutal indigenous rulers. One historical archetype of religious persecution is the Catholic Church's " Spanish Inquisition ;" in Silence , the sadistic Japanese governor is referred to as "the Inquisitor." He offers a familiar argument for cultural relativism when he suggests that Christianity is like a tree that cannot grow in the soil of Japan. A Catholic priest replies — correctly — that the soil has been poisoned by persecution.

One character cites the famous adage  of Tertullian, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church," suggesting that the patient suffering of Christians under persecution will merely draw more people to the faith. This may have been true in ancient Rome; but in much of the Middle East, the rise of Islam snuffed out existing Christian communities. Today, ISIS and other Islamist groups are devastating the few Christians who remain in that region with violent persecution not unlike that seen in Silence .

The story itself begins with two young Portuguese priests learning of rumors that a Jesuit priest named Ferreira, who had gone to Japan to continue the missionary work there, had apostatized — renounced his Christian faith.

The priests refuse to believe the reports — but are determined to go to Japan themselves to find the truth. The film tells the story of how they succeed in reaching Japan and are led to the underground Christian community. They are welcomed with joy — it has been years since the "hidden Christians" have had a priest who could administer the sacraments.

However, the two priests also hear about the persecution of Christians; eventually witness it from afar; then witness it from close up; and in the end, experience it themselves. The actual shedding of blood in Silence  (rated R) does not rise to the level of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ , but the film depicts a number of creatively horrible tortures inflicted upon the Christians — not to mention insidious psychological manipulation.

In ancient Rome, Christians needed only burn a pinch of incense in worship of the emperor to avoid his wrath. In Silence , the authorities place a small image of Jesus on the ground — and merely ask the Christians to put a foot upon it.

Part of the drama of the film comes as the two Portuguese priests wrestle with how to respond to these challenges. Is stepping on the image a meaningless gesture — a small price to pay to avoid torture and allow one's private devotion to continue unhindered? Or is it an inexcusable betrayal of Christ?

Eventually the two priests are separated, and meet very different fates. To say much more would be a spoiler.

Scorsese , an Oscar winner and eight-time Best Director nominee has given us a film that, despite its painful subject matter, has many beautiful scenes. It also features fine performances as the two young priests by Andrew Garfield  ( The Amazing Spider-Man ) and Adam Driver  ( Star Wars: The Force Awakens ). Liam Neeson appears as Ferreira.

Why is it called Silence ? The most obvious answer is found in the voice of the narrator (in the form of a letter by one of the priests). He speaks of the believers crying out to God in their pain — and hearing, it seems, only silence from God in return. In this sense, the film addresses the classic theological question of how a good God can allow evil and suffering.

Silence is a "Christian movie" — but it is not an "inspirational" one, ending in triumph for the Christians. If you can stomach the violence, however, it is a profound, thought-provoking, troubling, painful, deeply moving exploration of suffering and of religious freedom, raising some age-old questions — with no easy answers.

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Martin Scorsese on Screening of Christian Persecution Film 'Silence' on Vatican's Giant Crucifix

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Martin Scorsese’s Silence Is a Challenging Saga of Faith and Martyrdom

Martin Scorsese has evidently waited his entire life to direct a saga of martyrdom and Judas-like betrayal on the scale of Silence , his stark, portentous adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s novel about Portuguese Catholic priests who get put through the wringer (along with their native followers) in 17th-century Japan. The movie is impressive. Scorsese isn’t working in his usual busy late style, which is meant to make you say, “Can that man cook!” He’s in the self-abnegation mode of The Last Temptation of Christ and Kundun, shaking off the accumulated layers of film-consciousness in an attempt to make you see things as no one has before: with pity, terror, and — maybe hardest of all to induce — a gnawing ambivalence. It’s challenging in ways that go beyond watching violence committed against the flesh.

His protagonists are two young padres, Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garupe (Adam Driver), who travel to the Land of the Rising Sun in search of their mentor, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson). The older priest is rumored to have become an apostate, renouncing Christ while his fellow priests were singed, mutilated, and crucified. It’s even possible that Ferreira invented the ultimate test to determine if someone has successfully shed his or her belief: the fumi-e, an image of Christ on a stone or board onto which the believer must stomp.

Rodrigues and Garupe understand that Christianity — which had been tolerated for a time — has been driven underground by the shogun and his grand inquisitor. But they have no way of knowing the depth of the cruelty they’re about to encounter — the men and women rolled in straw mats and burned alive, or lashed to crosses and smashed by waves for days on end, or lowered headfirst into pits with cuts above their ears to allow their blood to drain, drop by agonizing drop. Perhaps even worse from the priests’ abstract perspective is that the very idea of Christian martyrdom will be called into question.

The first half of Silence is about what you’d expect if you’ve seen enough films with Japanese torturers. ( Unbroken didn’t break its hero, Louis Zamperini, but it broke me.) But we begin to sense a rift opening up between the priests. Garupe is unmoving in his faith, while Rodrigues visibly blanches when he hears the dying men and women speak of paradise in the afterlife. Given God’s resolute silence, Rodrigues doesn’t seem so sure. For Endo, true (as opposed to blind) faith is impossible without a large (and even potentially crippling) measure of doubt.

It’s in the movie’s second half that things get odd. The argument against Christianity is advanced by the elderly Inquisitor Inoue, played by Issey Ogata with a laughing-clown face that suggests a Kabuki Bert Lahr. The tree of Christianity withers in Japanese soil, he says, to which Rodrigues responds that the soil has been poisoned. But what do Rodrigues or his fellow missionaries know about that metaphorical Japanese soil? Raised a Christian, Endo felt a schism in himself between his religion and the culture and mores of his country. His protagonists in Silence are Christian outsiders because that’s what he felt like.

The wild card in Silence is the Judas figure, Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozuka), a filthy, slobbering wretch who became an apostate and then watched his entire Christian family die, and who now hurtles between mewling obeisance and the drive to betrayal. Beginning with Mean Streets, Judas has loomed large in Scorsese’s work. With Silence, he’s working toward his own Gospel of Judas. Doesn’t the Christ story carry within it the idea that man must sin before he can be saved? What if God expects man to fail?

It’s likely some audiences will have trouble with the last part of Silence, unused to hearing that the Christian missionaries with whom they’ve been identifying operate as much out of colonialist arrogance as true devotion. They’ll doubtless prefer the doubtless Thomas More of A Man for All Seasons, who sentenced hundreds of Protestants to be burned and beheaded but stuck to his principles and became a saint. To be fair to those audiences, it’s easier to dramatize certainty than ambivalence, and books like Endo’s can chart internal tug-of-wars more lucidly than films — even films with narration. Some members of Japan’s Catholic community denounced Silence when it was published, and the movie will generate a fair amount of controversy, too. Excellent!

What won’t be controversial is the poetry and economy of Scorsese’s filmmaking, the chiaroscuro intensity of Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography, and the sublimity — a word that encompasses both beauty and horror — of the coastal settings where men and women meet their deaths. The contrast between Garfield’s and Driver’s visages could hardly be more powerful: the first with small, fine features, the second with outsize protuberances worthy of Goya. Given his starring role as a conscientious objector in Hacksaw Ridge, this is the second time in the last two months in which Garfield has found himself courting religious martyrdom amid extreme carnage, his face a mask of suffering. He has hereby earned the right to do two or three lousy but high-paying rom-coms without a peep of complaint.

*This article appears in the December 12, 2016, issue of  New York  Magazine.

• martin scorcese
• andrew garfield
• adam driver
• liam neeson
• movie review
• new york magazine

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My review of the movie Silence

Martin Scorcese produced this movie in 2017 and it didn't do well. I discovered it the day before the feast day of Paul Miki. It's worth seeing, and it's worth a post-movie discussion group. Did anyone else watch it, and what did you think?

Here is my appraisal: The first half is right out of the Jesuit Relations. 100% accurate historical fiction down to the gesture. The next 25% is an allegory of what the church went through in the last 30 years in densely populated urban environments in the Northeast or Midwest. The last quarter is an allegory for people who read Marie Julie Jahenny and feel like the last Catholic standing. Maybe the last part, which was the part most criticized by reviewers, would be the part that speaks to Catholics today.

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"Faith Abides"

What You Need To Know:

(CC, BB, FR, AB, VVV, N, AA, M) Strong Christian, moral worldview of brutal pagan persecution of Christians in Japan, with many positive references to Jesus, faith, prayer, salvation, and Heaven, with some references to Buddhism and some theological nuances that may confuse some people and that may require some instruction by professional theologians, including one or two scenes with an ex-priest who makes some arguments against Christianity with a jailed priest and repeats an argument that Japan is figuratively a “swamp” where it alleges Christianity can’t take root; no foul language; scenes of extreme and strong, often disturbing violence with some blood includes a decapitation where the man’s headless body is dragged off screen, scenes where people are wrapped in straw mats and burned or deliberately drowned, scenes where people are tied to crosses and made to suffer (including having water from a hot springs poured or splashed on their heads and/or bodies), and instances where people are hung upside down with their heads in a pit after being slightly cut so that they slowly bleed to death; no sexual content, though priest is forced to commit apostasy and marry a Japanese widow; some naturalistic upper male nudity and partial rear male nudity; brief alcohol use in the form of sake and man appears to be a bit drunk in one scene; no smoking or drugs; and, persecution but rebuked and Christians are forced to renounce their faith but some don’t.

More Detail:

Based on an acclaimed 1966 Japanese novel, SILENCE is an historical drama from Martin Scorsese about two Roman Catholic priests in the 17th Century who travel to Feudal Japan to find out if it’s true that a famous missionary priest has committed apostasy after Japan’s ruler began a brutal campaign of persecution against Christianity. Though a little overlong, SILENCE is still a superbly made, often heartbreaking, artistic movie that ultimately paints a strong positive picture of Japan’s earliest Christian missionaries and converts, but some extreme violence and complex theology warrant extreme caution.

The historical background to this story is worth noting. In 1543, a Portuguese ship was blown off course and arrived in Japan. One of the leading feudal lords at the time was intrigued by the firearms the sailors brought with them. So, he started producing his own firearms to defeat his enemies. Eventually, the patriarch of the Tokugawa family joined with this lord to unify Japan. After achieving some great success in the early 1600s, the patriarch began to fear that the Christian missionaries that Portuguese, Italian and Dutch sailors brought with them would convert his subjects to the belief that all men and women are equal in the eyes of Jesus Christ, who is the Creator God. So, he started an intense campaign of persecution against the Christian missionaries and their converts.

SILENCE picks up in the middle of this persecution, in 1633. A revered priest named Ferreira (an historical person) is forced to witness the execution of many Christians. Six years later, word has reached Europe that Ferreira has renounced his faith after being tortured himself. Two Portuguese priests in China, Sebastian Rodrigues (whose mentor is Ferreira) and Francisco Garrpe, ask to be sent to Japan to find out if the stories are true.

The two priests are given a Japanese guide, who’s suffering intense guilt because he too renounced his faith during the horrible persecution and was forced to watch his whole family, who didn’t renounce their faith, be martyred. The three men reach a remote part of Japan, where they run into a group of Japanese Christians, who have gone underground. Father Sebastian, who narrates the story, and Father Francisco hide from the authorities. However, henchmen from the third ruling Tokugawa shogun (a grandson of the original patriarch) soon come to the village and threaten to kill four Christian men, including the priest’s guide, unless they recant their faith. The men have to put their foot on an image of Jesus Christ to demonstrate their apostasy. The guide, who’s returned to the faith, once again renounces his faith, but the three other men don’t.

So, the shogun’s men, led by a diabolically clever older man, tie the three men to crosses on the beach with the tide rising to tumbling heights over their heads. In a heartbreaking scene, the oldest of the three men, a powerful Christian believer, soon dies while one of the men prays for the Lord to accept the man’s soul in heaven. The man who prays lasts several more days, Francisco narrates, and sings a hymn while he finally does die.

Eventually, Sebastian and Francisco decide that one of them should travel to Nagasaki to see if they can find Father Ferreira. The other will leave Japan.

The Takugawa shogunate’s men soon capture Sebastian, however. The clever man from the persecuted village turns out to be the Takugawa shogun’s main inquisitor, the infamous Inoue (“In-o-way”), an historical figure. Sebastian is put in jail and forced to watch numerous Christians being tortured or killed. One man who refuses to recant is simply beheaded. Meanwhile, Sebastian’s interpreter often personally taunts and mocks him and his Christian faith.

Inoue confesses to Sebastian that Japan’s leaders have found that torturing the Catholic priests doesn’t work so well because it often just inspires other priests and their followers. He says they’ve found it more effective to torturing other Christians or even former Christians while the priests watch. So, he and his men start torturing Japanese Christians and even Japanese apostates to force Sebastian to renounce his faith.

Will Sebastian succumb to this new form of torture? Will he ever meet Father Ferreira?

SILENCE is superbly filmed and acted. Director Martin Scorsese does some of his best work directing the movie. Andrew Garfield, who also stars in Mel Gibson’s wonderful Christian movie, HACKSAW RIDGE, once again gives an excellent performance. He’s clearly become THE actor of the moment. Adam Driver, as Father Francisco, also delivers a fine performance, as do all of the primary Japanese actors involved in the movie. SILENCE is shot, however, in a realistic manner using naturalistic realism. This makes the movie play more like an art movie than a fast-moving blockbuster entertainment.

Best of all, SILENCE is nothing like Scorsese’s blasphemous TEMPTATION OF CHRIST. Christian faith is respected in the new movie. In fact, despite the apostasy and doubt that occurs during the movie, the ending actually confirms faith in Jesus Christ’s work on the Cross.

SILENCE has some profound theology in it that echoes some of the concerns St. Augustine expressed in his writings. It also asks some astute questions, such as where is God when it comes to the brutal persecution and suffering that occurs during the story. Thus, more than once, Father Sebastian asks himself why God is allowing the Japanese Christians to suffer so much.

Theologically, the movie is a rejection of the legalistic heresy of Donatism, which destroyed the church in Northern Africa and opened the door to the Muslim conquest of Africa. For example, the movie shows that merely stepping on a Christian icon doesn’t necessarily mean anything. After all, should a forced conversion to Buddhism (or Islam for that matter) actually be considered a real conversion?

At the same time, the movie is also a rejection of antinomianism, the heresy of lawlessness. The priest’s guide, who keeps apostatizing but then returning to the faith throughout the movie, is shown to be a pitiable, lost figure, who obviously has never truly been born again. As a result of this depiction, the movie clearly shows that true Christian faith must bear some true or actual fruit or works/deeds showing that your faith is real. Otherwise, your “faith” is probably not really faith empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Eventually, the movie shows that Christ is always with us when we suffer, whether or not we hear His voice. The Good News is that Jesus finally does show up toward the end when Sebastian actually hears His voice, and he makes an important decision. That decision is reflected in the movie’s third act and in its final shot when Christian faith is affirmed.

If there is a criticism of SILENCE – and there is – it’s in the fact that this is a certain kind of denominational movie where Christ’s suffering, and the suffering of His followers, takes center stage. Thus, SILENCE focuses more on the Crucifixion, the suffering of Jesus on the Cross, rather than the Resurrection. Jesus came not only to share in our pain and suffering, but also to overcome both by His death and resurrection. He won the victory for each of us and empowers us with His Grace to be more than conquerors in Him.

That said, the movie contains lines of dialogue mentioning Paradise and the Life to Come, when Jesus will welcome all Christians into His heavenly kingdom. “And, He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” – Revelation 21:4.

SILENCE has no foul language or lewd content. However, there are scenes of extreme and disturbing violence. They include a decapitation, scenes where people are wrapped in straw mats and burned or deliberately drowned, scenes where people are tied to crosses and made to suffer, and instances where people are hung upside down with their heads in a pit after being slightly cut so that they slowly bleed to death. The movie also contains scenes of people renouncing their faith and debating or questioning theological points. So, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution.

Although it’s not discussed in the movie, there are some historical indications that the Japanese pagans eventually martyred Father Ferreira when, as he was nearing death, he publicly recanted his apostasy. There are also some reports of Christians from overseas coming to visit Ferreira in Japan and, upon their return to Europe, reporting that Ferreira was emotionally distraught and even regretful about the apostasy he committed while being tortured by the Buddhist pagans.

Catholic Church

Silence movie catholic review

Is silence movie a true story.

The film is set to release on December 23, 2016. Read the true story of the last band of missionaries who sailed for Japan in defiance of the persecuting edicts of the Shogun— the true story behind the 2016 blockbuster movie ” Silence .”

What is the message of the movie Silence?

Silence is about faith, but it’s also an interrogation of colonialism, a movie that sees two white actors spend every scene preaching to or being interrogated by a cast of Asian actors. Martin defends missionary work as pure-hearted, but allows that the history of spreading the gospel isn’t perfect.

What happens at the end of the movie Silence?

There is no flicker of hope, except for a final scene of one of the characters, years in the future, dying and being cremated. At his cremation, hidden from the view of everyone, his hands hold a small cross that his wife put there (Scorsese added this scene , which was not in the book).

How long is the movie Silence?

Does the dog die in silence?

While, the dog’s fate is never explicitly shown, Miranda Otto’s character, Kelly, later confirms that the dog is dead. With the vesps on the prowl for anything that makes noise, it’s unlikely that the dog survived very long after being let out.

What does silence mean?

Does netflix have silence.

Netflix released The Silence on April 10, 2019. Global Road Entertainment originally acquired in December 2017 the U.S. distribution rights to the film.

What is the Fumie in silence?

Does anyone die in the silence?

Netflix movie The Silence follows a family trying to survive an apocalyptic outbreak of monsters. This is easier for the Andrews family, who all learned sign language after Ally (Kiernan Shipka) lost her hearing in an accident, but not everyone survives to the movie’s ending.

Why was Christianity banned in Japan?

However in 1587, in an era of European conquest and colonization, including in the Philippines near Japan , Toyotomi Hideyoshi issued an edict banning missionaries from the country due to the religion’s political ambitions, intolerant behavior towards Shinto and Buddhism, and connections to the sale of Japanese people

How can I watch silence?

Discover What’s Streaming On: Acorn TV. Amazon Prime. Apple TV+ BritBox. CBS All Access. Disney+ ESPN. Facebook Watch .

Is there going to be a second the silence movie?

Is the silence a rip off of a quiet place?

The Silence is technically not a mockbuster, as it was in development long before A Quiet Place came out. But Netflix is very much treating it as one, hoping it will tempt subscribers who liked Krasinski’s film (as well as Netflix’s own film Bird Box, which is also quite similar).

Where did they film the silence?

Toronto, Ontario

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