Silence

A 1966 nov­el by Japan­ese Catholic writer Shusako Endo has obsessed Mar­tin Scors­ese for so long that Silence ends a three-decade slog to bring it to the screen. Scorsese’s rep­u­ta­tion has long been assured, and while the past decade has brought the likes of The Avi­a­tor, The Depart­ed and The Wolf of Wall Street win­ning new audi­ences and sus­tain­ing his com­mer­cial via­bil­i­ty, none of them have seemed wrenched from his soul in the way that, say, Taxi Dri­ver or Rag­ing Bull so evi­dent­ly were. Might this 159-minute his­tor­i­cal saga about a Por­tuguese mis­sion­ary in 17^th-cen­tu­ry Japan be the late mas­ter­piece to at last reveal the true Marty?

Well, you cer­tain­ly get the sense that’s pre­cise­ly what he’s set out to do. It’s essen­tial­ly a sto­ry about a super-keen young priest named Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield, pos­i­tive­ly quiv­er­ing with sin­cer­i­ty), whose faith is test­ed when search­ing for his old men­tor (a suit­ably care­worn Liam Nee­son), the lat­ter believed to have renounced his reli­gion under tor­ture after the pre­vi­ous­ly wel­com­ing Japan­ese author­i­ties have decid­ed to cau­terise all traces of Chris­tian­i­ty from their country.

Rodrigues’ very pres­ence, how­ev­er, will expose the under­ground local faith­ful to fiendish pun­ish­ment, send­ing him into a vor­tex of doubt as native inno­cents die hor­ri­bly for their beliefs. The title then, refers to the silence of God in the face of human suf­fer­ing – a heavy-duty theme met with heavy-duty cel­lu­loid treat­ment. Brows are fur­rowed, the pace is painstak­ing, the direc­tion high­ly reserved by Scors­ese standards.

Who knows when any­thing this aus­tere last hit the mul­ti­plex­es, since we’re in the clas­sic art­house ter­ri­to­ry of Robert Bres­son and Carl Drey­er, work­ing a low-key nat­u­ral­ism imbued with a would-be spir­i­tu­al aura. The expan­sive run­ning time is a slow build, but its sheer depth of feel­ing brings a grad­u­al­ly enfold­ing embrace, pres­sur­ing us to con­front fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about the nature and val­ue of reli­gious belief.

Of all peo­ple, it’s Shinya Tsukamo­to (erst­while direc­tor of out-there hor­ror fare like Tet­suo), whose heart­break­ing per­for­mance as a hum­ble peas­ant aflame with Chris­t­ian for­ti­tude hits home ear­ly, pre­lude to an extend­ed the­o­log­i­cal bat­tle of wills between Issey Ogata’s wily mag­is­trate and Garfield’s Jesuit cler­ic, whose yearn­ing for the glo­ry of mar­tyr­dom is look­ing increas­ing­ly shaky.

It’s cumu­la­tive­ly involv­ing, but not every­one will side with Scorsese’s take on apos­ta­sy (pub­licly renounc­ing Chris­tian­i­ty) as a soul-deep betray­al, since keep­ing the faith is only unleash­ing mis­ery on the believ­ers. More­over, while the low-key visu­al­i­sa­tion car­ries a cer­tain mono­lith­ic weight, there’s a slight lack of poet­ry to give the film its own spir­i­tu­al lift-off. Unlike Endo’s vivd nov­el, here we’re basi­cal­ly held exte­ri­or to Garfield’s inner fer­ment, leav­ing a good actor striv­ing against near-impos­si­ble circumstances.

For all that, Scorsese’s sheer seri­ous­ness of address is itself an act of faith in cinema’s abil­i­ty to con­front the most eso­teric of issues, though strange­ly the film’s most affect­ing moment comes with the end cred­its, scored to the sound col­lage of a storm break­ing at sea, which at last epit­o­mis­es the buf­fet­ed seren­i­ty this very per­son­al odyssey has been seek­ing all along.