Silence is a 2 hour 41 minute movie adaptation of a book by Shusaku Endo about two seventeenth century Portuguese priests, played by Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver, who face certain danger by following in the footsteps of their mentor, played by “I have a certain set of skills” Liam Neeson, and entering feudal Japan to find out what happened to him. Martin Scorsese directed Silence, which is the second adaptation after Chinmoku, which I am eager to see.
I wanted to see Silence in theaters, but it was out of circulation in three weeks. People complain that Silence’s box office turnout is a symptom of religious persecution. I’m going to say that it probably has more to do with the fact that Scorsese’s films usually have a little more action, and with all due respect to the acting skills of the cast, Scorsese should have picked some lesser known actors whom an audience could at least pretend are Portuguese to play the priests. We have Bryan Mills/prequel Jedi/Ra’s al Ghul, one of the most recognizable Irish actors in popular culture with a dreadful weave. We have Kylo Ren basically wearing the same outfit as he did in The Force Awakens being forced to do some kind of accent that was definitely NOT Portuguese, and I kept expecting Lena Dunham to pop out behind a tree to make his journey all about her, especially since he is the most petulant of the two. I could eventually forget about Garfield’s iconic resume because I knew his work long before Spider-Man, but again, he is anything but Portuguese. I was actually surprised to find out that he is American. Ciaran Hinds plays an Italian priest. The cast is a complete distraction for a viewer that watches too many movies. Silence already changed aspects from the novel-why not make them from at least somewhere near Great Britain.
Unfortunately the casting made me doubt Scorsese’s ability to tell the story as the author may have intended. A Japanese Catholic wrote Silence, which I have not read yet. From watching Silence, I extrapolated that the novel must depict several tensions. First, the author is Japanese so he is not going to accidentally “other” the Japanese characters when he is critical of the ruling regime or his fellow Japanese Catholics. I suspect that the author’s criticism stems from his experiences with repression, culture and class warfare during WWII. Second, the author is Catholic, but I assume that he is also cognizant of the flipside of missionary work, that it is often accompanied by a perverted conflation of Jesus’ gospel and colonial interests to dominate another country for political and financial gain and entitlement because most cultures that were not European were often seen as inferior whereas Japan was used to being the colonialist and refused to be colonized, which is effectively depicted in Scorsese’s Silence. “You teach, but you don’t learn.”
While I am sure that Scorsese knew about these nuances, he is still an Italian American Catholic from another era. Silence seems to be in constant awe that anyone would be mean to a group of peasants and a few priests. The script and the acting definitely point to the dangers of imperialism and conflating serving Europeans as serving Jesus, but Silence depicts Garfield’s character’s vision of the face of Jesus is played straight as a European male who looks like him, which is still true for most Christians today even if the reality is that Jesus was from the Middle East. Scorsese knows the importance of images and iconography. His depiction is not wrong because a priest from that period may see Jesus like that, but if the priest’s early argument of the universality of the gospel is to hold any credible ground in Silence, there needed to be a moment like in Amistad where we actually see someone understanding and accepting the gospel despite cultural and language barriers. There is zero tension because Scorsese in early scenes show that the peasants only care about not being hungry anymore. Jesus is a financial choice, and I have no idea if the book elaborates on whether or not the priests try to convey the spiritual value to the peasants. So when Silence’s priests talk amongst themselves, and believe the Japanese don’t get it, Silence relies on the noble savage trope-the Japanese are not capable of getting it.
Other than the rulers and the repeat betrayer/repenter, most of the Japanese characters are almost interchangeable sufferers who speak broken English, and Scorsese and the priests see them in the same way as the Inquisitor, as tools to torture the priest, not innately interesting people with full lives in the midst of pain and suffering, which is disappointing since a huge part of the film is devoted to the priests’ life with the peasants. Silence is all about empathy with suffering, but how can you empathize with people as human beings if you don’t see them as human beings. There are ways to convey the importance of the peasants.
Fair or not, I compared Silence to Hana: The Tale of a Reluctant Samurai, which is set during a slightly later period in feudal Japan. I have zero knowledge of Japanese history, particularly of peasant life during the 1600s and 1700s, but the magnificent Hirokazu Koreeda made me invested in every character regardless of how long they were in front of the camera. Each character was an individual, and the difference in time period and country did not matter because Koreeda still conveyed the hopes and dreams and daily realities of peasants and samurai during that period. They were like me, and we seemed to have nothing in common. Silence never does that. They exist only to serve the priests and face torture and death from the Inquisitor. Only their pain touches me, not their lives. They don’t even get names.
Silence tells and never shows why the Inquisitor thinks Christianity is dangerous. Silence missed an opportunity to depict how it probably empowered the peasants to no longer respect traditional boundaries and to expect to be treated like they are children of God. Instead Silence is more preoccupied with the provocative idea of what it is like to be like Jesus-do you sacrifice your image as a Christian to save lives? Scorsese’s Silence unhesitatingly replies yes. Were the priests particularly aggrieved because of the Catholic notion that if you die without a last opportunity to confess, your soul is lost? I do not actually think that the answer to my question matters. I would say that for me, as a Protestant, the idea that a man can save anyone and the anguish over defiling any iconography are not concepts that I adhere to so I probably would have trampled all night long, but been hard-pressed to lie about anything in the Apostle’s Creed. Still the Bible shows models of lying to live for a greater purpose and dying instead of rejecting a part of your faith so I would say that it is between you and God. Also the subservience to the priest as the only one who can do certain things is a particularly Protestant grievance, which may be why I see it as colonialist.
I am disappointed that reviewers simply characterize Kichijiro as a Judas figure. He is also a Peter figure because he repeatedly denies, returns, repents and receives forgiveness. In Matthew 18: 21-22, it says, “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” I think that this dynamic between Kichijiro and Rodrigo was actually a valuable lesson for Rodrigo and was more powerful than the final scene, which is allegedly not in the book.
I am glad that Silence moved people, but it did not move me, and it took me over one hour to begin to get invested in the characters. If you are Catholic or a hard-core Scorsese fan, then you may feel differently.