Martin Scorsese's SILENCE, adapted from Shûsaku Endô's novel of monks in 17th-century Japan, starring Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield, Ken Watanabe, and Adam Driver

i think the trailers for this tried to make it look a bit more mel gibson-ish in its religious persecution aspect but it's a very subdued and internal film in a lot of respects, it's quite something. hardly stylized in the usual scorsese sense whatsoever, it's a very "still" film. it moves at an extremely leisurely pace that i found pretty hypnotic but...it's not for everyone, that's for sure.

Driver lost 50 lbs for this, it seems, so playing Joey Ramone is not out of the question i guess.

Scorsese, Japan, interior, still, I'm all over this tbh

Nomar how did u get to see this ?

garfield reminds me of someone in the trailer but i can't place it.

Just saw a trailer for this at the movies and he looks like that guy from Horrible Histories, Mathew Baynton, so much so that I wasn't sure it wasn't him for a while. No doubt not the person he reminds you of though.

... he also looks a bit like Andy Murray, lol.

i saw it as a guest at a WGA screening last night. i wasn't sure what to expect, maybe something far less austere? it's not flashy, it has nary a single scorsese stylistic tic that i can think of, this is a very serious and adult film about religion. it probably won't succeed for everyone but i think many of the people who didn't like his 'gangs of new york' thru 'wolf of wall street' run might end up being some of its biggest proponents. i could be wrong. i think he's done something really interesting here. the performances are all very good to outstanding and it looks amazing.

glad he couldn't squeeze in any Stones tracks

so Garfield's OK? I thought he might liack the gravitas.

i thought garfield was fine, i had only seen him in a couple smaller roles and couldn't get a read on him in those (red riding and social network) but here i think he's gives a good central performance.

*he gives

this movie doesn't really fuck around, you can really see why Scorsese has wanted to make it and you can see it's incredibly personal (as opposed to say, my wondering why he wanted to make Gangs of New York, even though i did like it.)

can we get mods to replace Ken Watanabe w/ Tadanobu Asano in thread title?

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Sunday, September 13, 2015 5:55 AM

btw tadanobu asano was exceptionally good

video

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/scorseses-27-years-silence

Thanks nomar. Can't wait for this. I finished the novel months ago and it's one of those books that haunts, for sure.

initial review roundup

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/martin-scorseses-silence

FC interview by Nick Pinkerton (likely best read after seeing the film).

I couldn’t get the Japanese films out of my mind. Where to put the camera? Tatami level? The old story of the Westerner in Japan. I’m not Japanese; I can’t shoot nature or roof tiles the way Kobayashi did in the opening credits of Samurai Rebellion, or in Harakiri. I’ll say it: I enjoy lining up medium shots and inserts. They call them inserts, but there’s no such thing. It’s a shot. If you have somebody else do your inserts, it’s not going to work. You have to do it. And that comes via Bresson and Hitchcock and Ozu. I enjoy thinking in those cuts.

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/martin-scorsese-silence-interview/

thought this was great

intrigued by this

might actually go watch it

i really want to see this

wide release on the 13th

right now it only looks like it will be playing in 1 theater in Sacramento but i'm def gonna try to get out & see it

Oscar nominations are on the 24th, so it could go wider after that if...

hope so!

morbs did you see it? are you reviewing it and have to maintain "silence" until your review comes out??

seeing this tomorrow with my recently un-lapsed catholic parents

I quit criticism about 3 years ago, nomar. I have not seen the film yet because I could not get up early enough for a cheap matinee during the holidaze.

This post might be a bit spoilery

The stylistic choices Scorsese made are def p interesting here - there are one or two Mizogouchi-like moments (shots of boats on misty waters) but I was surprised that he pretty much resisted long tracking shots in favour of yes, shot-countershot (in other words, the film sticks very closely to the traditions/methods of classical American narrative cinema). You can imagine a much more 'hysterical' approach to the same subject matter (only really present in some of the performances - Garfield seems to spend much of the film weeping); so the film's almost complete lack of a musical score, the sounds of 'nature' that open and close the film, the limited colour palette (a lot of brown) and the mostly discrete handling of the violence and torture all speak to the silence of the title. This is a contemplative movie about gigantic human feelings and beliefs.

Felt there were a couple of mis-steps - the voice of Christ moment, and the final shot, which is as hokey as Spielberg at his pandering worst - but you certainly couldn't accuse Scorsese of resting on his laurels. It's inspiring to see such a big name director trying something new so late into his career.

at first blush this felt like a masterpiece. i was overwhelmed by it. i'm sure i'll temper that later but wow.

I love this movie too

much to say but regarding style there was two (at least) really striking moments in which the camera rapidly pulls out and up in moments of extreme pain--but that final shot, which did not strike me as sentimental or in poor taste, reverses that camera movement in a really powerful way.

i also appreciated the permutations of the title, from the obvious silence of God to a kind of devotional silence by the end.

it is really great i believe. and out of all of scorsese's output since the '90s this one is by far the least audience friendly in terms of how it treats religion seriously and intelligently, how much of the dialogue is given over to interfaith dialogue both hostile and diplomatic, the seeming pointlessness of the tortures (none of which are particularly grisly, this is a relatively sedate film for scorsese by those standards), the switch from ego keeping hold to complete loss of control by the end for the main characters. etc etc

i wasn't quite sure of the choice to depict the face of christ in the movie so explicitly and frequently (in the book it's an effective literary device, particularly since the protagonist muses often on the fact that Jesus's face is never described in the bible) but among the many images that linger with me from this movie it's mostly the faces, the fear and agony of the tortured japanese christians in particular but also garfield's very open and expressive demeanor, the magistrate's smugness, neeson's inexpressiveness which becomes garfield's later on.

(also lots of talk about faces in the dialogue, "i can see your face," as one of the authorities says to a christian peasant after trampling...)

Heard that the only English translation of the book is awful.

the translation did strike me as a bit flat-footed--not that i can compare it to the original.

Remarkable film. More thoughts later but am so glad it was Scorsese who made this.

and not Innaritu?

^we were all thinking it

Still a slightly weird thing to write about a remake...

kind of, I guess - I just took it as shorthand: Scorsese is the best fit for this material among current directors who might conceivably have adapted it

(also remake is imprecise imo)

If this were a remake of the '70s film rather than a film of the novel then yeah it would be a weird thing to say. Smdh

Xpost This is what I meant re: Scorsese.

lol this exact conversation plays out upthread

this got considerably better in the second half, once garfields character had repeated the same 'why must they suffer' spiel ten times over, when it finally got into some debate over its subject. but it failed to move past its grevious christian missionary pity, never once asking, is the actual mission of missionaries a noble one, or rather, was the way many christian missionaries acted noble? was it 'christian'? im no expert on the faith in japan, but you dont have to be a scholar to know all the crimes of missionaries across the globe. but if you didnt, this film would not let you know. such an admission would no doubt ruin the entire premise. other than that, its one of MS' most sensitively made films. a minor addition in his filmography overall, but a significant one. but i had had enough of the monotony of the driver and garfield characters voiceovers after an hour.

i meant, i had just had enough of voiceovers (dont think driver did any voiceover)

voiceovers

this is a Scorsese film ffs, we got off light

s the actual mission of missionaries a noble one

this is more or less one of the central questions confronted by the protagonist. and colonialism and the historical transgressions of the church are definitely implicitly and explicitly present.