Thankfully though, all his opponent would have to do to stop this is release yet another terrible season of Keeping Up with the Kardashians on Netflix and a special edition of some new Jordans on Election Day and 60% of our nation would be too preoccupied to vote. This is why something like effective missionary trips are a thing of the past; any time you ask a Millennial to go anywhere where Instacart or Wi-Fi isn’t an option they look at you is if you’re the Devil himself trying deceive them.
This is also why Martin Scorsese’s new film will be forgotten within the next two weeks. People going across the sea to spread a message that’s important to them? Heck, in today’s society we won’t even consider dating someone if it requires us getting on the tollway to do so (raising hand). But that’s what Silence is all about; two Portuguese priests who risk their lives to go to Japan to find their mentor Liam Neeson and to also spread the word of The Gospel.
This of course is dangerous because in the 1600’s (and even today in quite a few countries) you could be killed for worshipping Jesus. Well apparently Ferreira (Neeson) chose the route of apostatizing and getting a cute Japanese woman to be his wife versus that of being tortured to death. His mentees Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garrpe (Adam Driver) however refuse to believe he’d do something like this and choose to voluntarily go on a dangerous mission to find him.
Well once they finally do make into Japanese territory, they spend the majority of their time hiding during the day and witnessing to the Japanese people who worship in secret at night. If they are caught doing so, they are forced to apostatize and then watch their families burn right in front of them. So as you can imagine, there aren’t very many opportunities for Rodrigues and Garrpe to go out and look for Ferreira. The closest they do come to finding him is when they are betrayed by one of the villagers Kichijiro, the film’s funniest and saddest character.
Now many people will probably hate Kichijiro’s character but he represented what was a common theme in the Bible, and that’s a constant desertion of one’s faith due to man’s fallible nature. If we are all being honest with ourselves, we’d all see a little bit of Kichijiro in our lives as we tend to constantly take the easy way out of things; see the Netflix over marching scenario I presented earlier. And that’s part of what made this film so good; it was an honest look into how we react when we think God isn’t hearing our pleas. This is something that Scorsese was struggling with for quite some time, so he decided to express this frustration artistically via film.
It’s just that he does so in a brutal and violent way. I don’t want to ruin the film for you but just know that both Rodrigues and Garrpe go through some unbelievably trying times as they enter a world of sick mind games and barbarism that’s solely fueled from an incomprehensible intolerant mentality. Based off of his performances in Hacksaw Ridge and now Silence, Garfield has made me forget those terrible Spiderman movies and has earned my respect as a top level actor in Hollywood. Silence, for the most part, puts its focus on him and his experience and he certainly holds his own when it comes to starring in a demanding Scorsese film. After the disaster that was The Last Temptation of Christ, you had to know that Scorsese wanted to make up for it in the worst way, and I’d have to say that for the most part he did just that with this unbelievably heady material.
Now there were a few moments in the film’s climax that personally took me out of it due to its biblical inaccuracies but that shouldn’t take away from what the film tried to do; which was essentially put out there what most people are afraid to admit publicly. Making this kind of film took a lot of balls for a director of Scorsese’s status and I can’t help but say that I respect him for that. I give this film a rating of FRESH!
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