Silence

Silence (2016) is about two Portuguese priests travelling to Japan in the seventeenth century. Christianity is banned there. Priests are executed and converts are tested with torture. Rodrigues and Garupe hear that their teacher Ferreira has renounced his faith, refuse to believe it, and go to find him. They meet villagers living in secret. The villagers have had no priest for years and have been waiting for baptism, confession and prayer. Then the authorities arrive. Their method is not to kill the priest. They gather the villagers and kill them in front of him, and tell him the one way to stop it: step on a holy image and say it means nothing. Whether doing that is renouncing your faith or saving people is never answered. The title comes from there. Rodrigues prays constantly and receives no answer; the silence of God is the real subject. It is adapted from Shūsaku Endō's novel of 1966. Scorsese read the book in the eighties and it took roughly twenty eight years to make; rights disputes and financing problems stopped it repeatedly. Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and Liam Neeson star. Garfield and Driver lost serious weight for it. It was shot in Taiwan. There is almost no music; the sound design is built on insects, waves and wind. It lost money. It runs 161 minutes. Good for: religious and moral drama, Scorsese's serious side, and historical narrative. Less good for: it is very long and slow, the torture is extended, and it offers no easy answer.