Movie Review: Silence
This was a tough but intriguing watch, especially as a practicing Catholic. It is a rare example of a film that I think is really good but I don’t like. Silence is very well acted and directed. What it wants to do it does well. It is at once subtle and powerful in how it displays the plight of the kakure kirishitan people, the hidden Japanese Christian converts. Their willingness to suffer and die for their faith is inspiring. Having been to Nagasaki recently and having attended mass in those old churches I can appreciate the depth of their devotion. They kept the faith in secret for centuries. Today now even after suffering a nuclear holocaust Nagasaki has blossomed into Japan’s most Christian city with over 100 churches.
Silence wrestles with an extremely compelling moral conflict: If God loves us, why would he ask us to endure torture and death in his name? The story is inspired by the struggles Portuguese missionaries who traveled to Japan during the early 17th century Edo period to support the persecuted Christian converts. This film is actually the second movie adaptation of the original book Chinmoku (沈黙) written by Endo Shusaku, a Japanese Catholic writer famous in the post WW2 era. The book does a better job of exploring the internal world of faith vs doubt. The film is neither pro nor anti-Christian. The Catholic Bishop Robert Barron captured some of my thoughts quite well. My bone to pick with the story is that it frames Christianity as the problem, the thing that has to go away, be hidden, be denounced, and kept secret in order to save people.
I give the film credit for thoughtfully presenting the Japanese perspective. Missionaries must understand the local culture before asking people to adopt new beliefs and there are multiple well-written dialogues about the Japanese way of life and their right to resist foreign influence. However change is a natural part of life and all cultures must evolve along some sort of principle. The martyrs of the early church staked their lives on this. The faith would not have lasted long had they been willing to abandon it the way the priests do in Silence. What’s worse is that the priests go on to support the oppressive government for years to come, taking on Japanese names, wives, and publicly denouncing Christ. Then, when one of the priests finally grows old and dies, we see a small cross buried with him in his coffin, as if to suggest that he secretly won in the end.
This is insulting. You cannot spend your life publicly denouncing something and still pretend to adopt it as an identity in death. Imagine a Football fan who claimed to love the Patriots but spent his whole life wearing Jets jerseys and rooting for New York teams. It would be meaningless if he elected to be buried with a Tom Brady jersey. Yet this is the secular ideal for Christianity — have zero impact on the real world, leave the godless alone to have their fun and you believers just go be buried with your cross quietly. This is not genuine faith. Faith asks more of us than this. Faith is not just about what happens inside of us; it must be made manifest in reality — it must influence what we do.
On balance I would still recommend the film because it is compelling and artful. Scorsese waited decades to make the movie after The Last Temptation of Christ was released in 1988. They are similar movies in that both present controversial takes on Christianity meant to communicate Scorsese’s own ideas about religion. Silence is much more stark in its violence and presentation of torture and human suffering. It brings to light some of Christianity’s most powerful dilemmas, such as the nature and utility of forgiveness presented through the character of Kichijiro, a Japanese convert who continually betrays Christians and then immediately runs to the priests again and again to confess and be absolved. Silence is a memorable film both for its look and its ideas. I am glad I watched it. The book is better though.
Grade: B+
