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

(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.

anyway not terribly interested in debating this at length but suffice it to say that i don't think both side-ism is a really useful way to talk about this film or topic.

i probably sound like a catholic or christian apologist (im not a christian) but i think the movie becomes immeasurably richer if you take stock of what a revolutionary idea christianity was and is in certain contexts--what an incredibly disrupting force it was (for good and ill) and its radical revaluation of human life. seen in that context an image of a japanese peasant refusing to trample (refusing to renounce the meaning and value of his/her own life) and facing actual fucking crucifixion in the ocean, being burned alive ("on fire with faith"), or drowned at sea becomes incredibly powerful--to me anyway.

Silence has been filmed twice before, once by Masahiro Shinoda, and once by Joao Mario Grilo. Which makes sense for a story of Portuguese monks in Japan. It's still a weird thing to say about a film that's been done twice before, since clearly Scorcese's take doesn't preclude someone doing a fourth version.

Every film is better for not having been made by Innaritu, but come on, in no way is Scorcese the best fit for the third version about this book. Joao Pedro Rodrigues just made an incredibly weird biopic about St Antonius of Padua, and has done film before on Portuguese colonialism, how amazing would his version have been? Or perhaps Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Naomi Kawase or Koji Fukada, what's their view on the disruptive power of christianity in Japan?

being burned alive ("on fire with faith")

use of CGI fire really bugged me tbh

my favorite opinions on film are definitely the "i haven't seen this movie but i have opinions anyway" variety

especially when it's the same bullshit virtue signaling we put up with all last year in the election threads. welcome back fred

My favorite posts are definitely the 'I haven't contributed to this thread at all before, but I simply can't give up the chance to shit on this other poster'. That always really makes a thread move in the right direction.

But what's your opinion on late period Martin Scorcese, contra the vitality of Japanese and Portuguese cinema, k3v?

just gonna

Scorsese

carry on

Oh, ffs. Be right back, I have a pitch to proofread...

did i get transported into that scene from good will hunting y/n

anyway scorsese makes good movies and even though he's white and american i'm looking forward to seeing this when it opens

I agree. He has been on a roll this decade. The Rodrigues version of this would be SO GOOD, though.

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.

― ryan, Sunday, 8 January 2017 20:23 (one hour ago) Permalink

anyway not terribly interested in debating this at length but suffice it to say that i don't think both side-ism is a really useful way to talk about this film or topic.

i probably sound like a catholic or christian apologist (im not a christian) but i think the movie becomes immeasurably richer if you take stock of what a revolutionary idea christianity was and is in certain contexts--what an incredibly disrupting force it was (for good and ill) and its radical revaluation of human life. seen in that context an image of a japanese peasant refusing to trample (refusing to renounce the meaning and value of his/her own life) and facing actual fucking crucifixion in the ocean, being burned alive ("on fire with faith"), or drowned at sea becomes incredibly powerful--to me anyway.

well that last post makes any point in discussing this probably moot (and yes, it was a disrupting force, but the film doesnt quite seem able to note this) but its not about both sideism. its about accepting this is missionary propaganda. its in love with faith. with the concept of faith. the display of it. the belief in it. but its depiction only of that is at best convenient, at worst, intellectually dishonest. and it does not make the film richer. it makes it weakly, lazily myopic.

i understand a lot of people watching this, esp MS fans, love the mythology of religion/the commitment of believers/films which espouse these things (usually without actually wanting to sign on as a member of any faith, only to see it romantically depicted on screen), but the protagonist confronts the notion of japanese ppl accepting christianity, the idea of a religion being adopted by those of another culture/continent, but it does not, *ever* IIRC, confront the idea of these priests on their missions resorting to pretty heinous tactics and practices.

im all for seeing how cruelly innocent believers were unjustly punished merely for being christian, but for their to be no recognition, for no mention in those conversations, of the shit that priests did to accomplish their goals, was a major flaw of the film.

if however, you have no connection to places/people these practices were carried out on, then i understand that you might find it a bit tougher to consider why this may be seen as a failing.

i did not mean to be dismissive of your point but merely that i fear we'd be arguing over wanting to see different movies.

one scene thought that at least implicitly accuses even well meaning priests is the drowning scene and the adam driver character's heroic and yet totally inadequate response to it. he fails them.

i probably sound like a catholic or christian apologist (im not a christian) but i think the movie becomes immeasurably richer if you take stock of what a revolutionary idea christianity was and is in certain contexts--what an incredibly disrupting force it was (for good and ill) and its radical revaluation of human life. seen in that context an image of a japanese peasant refusing to trample (refusing to renounce the meaning and value of his/her own life) and facing actual fucking crucifixion in the ocean, being burned alive ("on fire with faith"), or drowned at sea becomes incredibly powerful--to me anyway.
― ryan, Sunday, January 8, 2017 4:34 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don’t know why this should be, but Christianity always becomes incredibly poignant when in the underdog role—the clandestine, catacomb Christianity.

I think so too. And I found it in the Japanese actors. Shinya Tsukamoto playing Mokichi; Yoshi Oida, who plays Ichizo: he’s 83 years old. There’s something about people understanding that they matter, that they have a spirit, that they have a soul. And that they’re not just chattel. Something that, as a concept, was one of the things that undid the ancient world system of slavery. It was a new concept, that everyone was equal in that sense of their having a soul, their lives being of value. And I think that’s what gave the Japanese Christians something special. Even if at times, it was misinterpreted, it still gave them something special that they did not have before. I’m not one of them, so I can’t speak of it in definitive terms. The way Endo presents it—Rodrigues says it in the voiceover: they work like beasts, but Christ did not die for the beautiful, he died for the ugly; he died for the evil ones, too. It’s easy to die for the beautiful and the good. So, that’s really interesting. That changes our way of seeing the world. Beyond revolution. That’s what I found in the making of the picture, too.

^scorsese gets it.

another way of putting it (and let me say here that i think the movie and novel both contain complexities that go beyond this) is that the climactic moment involves the protagonist recognizing that the sinular suffering of these japanese souls is to be recognized--that the singular quality of their lives matters--and is more important than Christianity as a doctrine, as a public profession of faith, or his own desire for christlike martyrdom. this is to argue for christianity as a principle that undoes principles, undoes ideologies and doctrines.

singular suffering...though "sinular" has a ring to it.

ryan otm

I'm getting more and more uncomfortable with this thread...

theme of thread: "its just the best religion. deal with it."

if you are not able to grasp or accept that there is something like an "essence" of christianity that is distinct from the Church or doctrine then you'll forever be butting your head against this novel/film. it's not about proselytizing (though there is an element of that, surely) but it doesn't strike me as terribly insightful to argue that Endo, writing in japan as a christian in the wake of his own country's catastrophic disregard for human life and the equally tragic and evil results of those actions visited upon his countrymen, should be terribly worried about the sins of the church which are in fact quite remote to him. should those sins be acknowledged? without question. does every narrative that is about christian missionaries need to rehash them? no.

Yeah it just seems one-dimensional to do so.

Been reading this thread and thinking I might watch and strikes me there is something of an Abel Ferrara (or even Pasolini) vibe to all of this (?) a reading of faith and the way it moves and churns inside people and its surroundings..

Scorsese has always praised Pasolini's Christ film as a key one for him... I also found this quote (re Last Temptation:

"The picture I wanted to make was about Jesus on Eighth Avenue, something like Pasolini's Accatone. The pimp represents all of us. He's our mortal condition..."

https://books.google.com/books?id=ljPBGqCn3ccC&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=scorsese+pasolini+faith&source=bl&ots=riol1Kwgr_&sig=y0Jm5x9fXiHHAHEYo_2ULLQ3s7c&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiR4YqSzbXRAhUG3YMKHV_DAyIQ6AEIJzAC#v=onepage&q=scorsese%20pasolini%20faith&f=false

should those sins be acknowledged? without question. does every narrative that is about christian missionaries need to rehash them? no.

Hmm. What if we just put the Spanish Inquisition skit as a mid-credits stinger in all of them?

I've said my piece. I never reduced the film to my issue with it. But as I've yet to see anyone making my point I feel it's still valid.

My last comment was more about the historo-evangelising in the thread since then.

Carry on.

StillAdvance otm.

But as I've yet to see anyone making my point I feel it's still valid.

#don'tStopBelieving

Scorsese has always praised Pasolini's Christ film as a key one for him... I also found this quote (re Last Temptation:

Yeah I guess my fear when I heard about this was that it could turn out like Last Temptation, which I didn't like (saw that over ten years ago now).

My memory may play me false but the scene where Kichijiro betrays Father Rodrigues seemed to be a direct homage to the Judas pieces of silver scene in the Pasolini film, right down to the sound design.

I couldn't get over how much the story seemed like a melding of the gospel and Heart of Darkness.

another long interview, in Commonweal (speaking of Conrad)

The priests in Silence belonged to the Society of Jesus, so they belonged to a group, a religious institution. Something has happened to their mentor. They go to look for him. And it’s as if we were to go to another planet today. They go to a place that couldn’t be more different from where they live, both physically—I mean, the actual landscape itself—and culturally. That means the way people speak, and their body language, and every aspect of how they live: how they write, if they do write; how they drink water, inside a kind of bamboo thermos, so to speak. How they live with nature around them. And their perception of the world and the universe around them. I couldn’t really try to explain any of that; I just had to let it happen. I had to let it happen through, for example, the behavior of the inquisitor and the behavior of the interpreter. The interpreter has no name. Is he even really an interpreter? When he’s asked certain questions, he says, “I cannot comment on things from the inquisitor’s office.” Now, in making the film, I knew what their hierarchy was, from the research we did. But if you’re stuck there, like Rodrigues, you’re caught, you don’t know who’s coming into that jail cell or that hut of twigs. You just don’t know. I did get bogged down at first in trying to write this script, and trying to explain a different world and different time, but I realized I had to let it play out. A lot of it is though the pacing. How to find the pacing that is appropriate for that world, without losing an audience?....

RRC: There’s a Heart of Darkness-like structure to this story. Is that something you were consciously thinking of?

MS: No. [laughs] No! Because I think there’s such beauty in the landscape and the people on the way to find Ferreira, whereas Heart of Darkness is so terrifying. I reread that about ten years ago. It’s absolutely terrifying....

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/interview-martin-scorsese

Glenn Kenny on that whole damn-the-missionary thing

Some of my critical colleagues have been expressing dismay in social media that some prominent commentators have blinded themselves to Martin Scorsese's magnificent Silence on the grounds of "Meh, religion," or, more strongly put, "Religion sucks," or, "Both sides do it so why doesn't the movie show the depredations of the Catholic Church." This is unfortunate but I think actually more unavoidable than the La La Land nonsense. The La La Land detractors ridiculously blow up the movie's "chase your dreams" metaphors; the anti-Silence folks pick nits that are either non-existent or entirely beside the point, conveniently skirting the fact that this is an adaptation of a Japanese novel. My opinion on this may be suspect because I was raised Catholic but for me the specifics of the apostasy took second place to larger and even more moving themes. That is, I eventually intuited something beyond Catholicism versus the shogunate and vice-versa. Past faith, I felt Silence addressing issues of will, free will, and whether there really is such a thing as human freedom. The questions it presents, I thought, were more moving and unsettling for the cinematic form in which they were presented. If you're looking at it and going down a list of the things you think it should be showing you because of the cultural baggage you want it to carry (and I'm not saying that the movie is inconsiderate of that cultural baggage—it's not), then you're not going to get it, and too bad.

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2017/01/white-saviors-the-micro-and-the-macro.html

the anti-Silence folks pick nits that are either non-existent or entirely beside the point, conveniently skirting the fact that this is an adaptation of a Japanese novel.

he might be surprised to know that directors often add their own ideas, or just their own ways of seeing a text, too.

If you're looking at it and going down a list of the things you think it should be showing you because of the cultural baggage you want it to carry (and I'm not saying that the movie is inconsiderate of that cultural baggage—it's not), then you're not going to get it, and too bad.

ha. i do love how unquestioningly religious people seem to be about this film. im sure MS (and the church) would be pleased.

people seem to confuse those who found the film beautiful, rich, provocative, and all the rest of it, but still found aspects lacking (which for a film about so many important questions, is surely no unnatural thing), with those dismissing it outright. and from the glut of positive reviews it seems to have gotten (it feels like there is a certain politeness in the few reviews ive read about it), it doesnt seem like there are THAT many 'anti silence' people out there. i could be off base though, ive not been desperate to read every think piece or editorial about it. i get that ppl have perhaps reached saturation point w/r/t white saviours, bechdel tests, minority representation, etc, in cinema and TV, but i dont see silence as a film about white saviours (white martyrs really), just a film that has a very particular vision about its subject and what it does and doesnt want to show, and it is quite prudent about what might get in the way of that message.

The church approved of Pasolini's St Matthew. That didn't matter because it was a great film.

Then again you are the only who questions stuff ever StillAdvance - well done!

well done on focusing on that part of my post. youre not at all petty, and clearly the bigger man. is there a way i can block your 'contributions', meaningful as they are, on this website? definitely a bug, not a feature, if not.

on second thought, im quite happy to be one of the anti silence nit picking brigade. if youre feeling a wave of christian pride watching this movie, thats great, and im glad it makes you feel all proud, powerful or whatever, but im not sure the argument about it not being fair to push all the baggage of the subject onto it IS unfair. the baggage is there for a reason, and to want to deny its importance, its presence, seems too easy. can of worms forthcoming, but its a bit like if MS (or anyone) did a film about colonialism, and made the colonialists seem wholly benign.

then again, im sure that would inspire a post like 'i probably sound like a colonial apologist (im not the descendent of any colonialists) but i think the movie becomes immeasurably richer if you take stock of what a revolutionary idea colonialism was" or similar.

StillAdvance you'll love the third reviewer in this show (starts at 2:50): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08558zv