Silence - Review

There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing a director’s long-gestating passion project arriving on screen, especially when it’s a Martin Scorsese film. However, with that level of anticipation and a hefty $50 million budget, Silence is under more pressure to perform than a Jesuit priest left hanging upside down for days.

While not to everyone’s taste thanks to the near crippling run-time and lack of non-diegetic sound, it makes for a (typically) well-crafted existential epic that rewards viewers with enough drama and meditative themes to occupy the brain for days.

Silence sees Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver search for their mentor as Fathers Rodrigues and Garrpe, 17th century Porteuguese priests in hostile Japan. Facing persecution and guilt regarding Japanese Christians punished for their presence, they fail to find Father Ferrara (Liam Neeson offering his finest work since Schindler) and instead find themselves questioning their blind faith in a voiceless God. “Am I just praying to silence?” Rodrigues asks. Scenes of cruel torture and humiliation wear away at the fugitive preachers, and Scorsese frequently visits the theme surrounding God’s apparent indifference towards those devoted to him without outright blasphemy or unrefined  angst that many may have channeled. The lack of a score for the majority of the film creates a natural environment, devoid of divine intervention even as Garfield passionately begs for validation.

Left to carry the weight of the film for a period, Garfield rises to the occasion as a man of the cloth whose faith is as tortured as the Christians are physically by the Japanese (who thankfully aren’t completely vilified, their point of view is justly examined), shown through his layered performance, exhibiting grief, anger and mania as he dominates the screen. Any one of the supporting cast could be in awards contention, be it Driver’s increasingly skeptical and pessimistic Garrpe – who Driver ending up losing 50 lbs for the role – or cowardly Kichijro, ably played by Yosuke Kubozuka; Kubozuka carries the weight of his character’s past misdeeds with pained facial expressions and the appropriate gravitas. The standout is probably Issei Ogata’s antagonistic menace Inoue. His thoughtful conversing with Rodrigues, laden with metaphors for the inability for Christianity to translate in Japan best surmises the overarching themes.

Silence is at its best when depicting Garfield’s pride-infused beliefs being shattered. Once the early consequences of the duo’s mission become painfully abundant, the film breaks out of its trudging walk into a spectacular jog through gorgeously filmed locations and ideal cinematography (kudos to Rodrigo Pietro for capturing the haunting image of the Inquisition emerging from steam and mist). It refuses to pull punches in its authenticity or delivery of its purpose.

Little more could be expected from the New York director or such rich material.

FOUR STARS and a respectful bow for a mammoth task.