Review: Silence

Silence (15)

USA 2016  161 mins  Dir: Martin Scorsese  Cast: Andrew Garfield, Liam Neeson, Adam Driver, Ciarán Hinds, Yosuke Kubozuka

Long, slow and ponderous, Martin Scorsese’s third faith epic after Kundun and The Last Temptation of Christ is punctuated by brief outbursts of religious torture porn (the only form of torture porn arthouse audiences are permitted to enjoy without feeling guilty). This presents something of a challenge to fans of Marty’s pleasingly violent gangster flicks. Nod off during one of the lengthy exchanges or laboured analogies about belief, doubt and colonialism and you’re in danger of missing a beheading, a drowning or even a burning alive.

It’s 1633 and a muddy, mist-shrouded, grey-green Japan has apparently swallowed up Father Ferreira (Neeson). His final missive arrived in Portugal having suffered a delay that would shame even the Royal Mail. It paints a grim portrait of a Dante-esque nation in which Christian converts are persecuted and missionaries forced to apostatise. Tortures include boiling water administered by beastly Buddhists using ladles with holes to accentuate the pain caused by each drop. Yup, Saw‘s John Kramer has nothing on these guys. Wait till you see the two imaginative forms of drowning and – ulp! – ‘the pit’.

Determined to find out what has become of their mentor, eager, devout young Jesuit priests Sebastiao Rodrigues (Garfield) and Francisco Garrpe (Driver) petition Father Valignano (Hinds, pulling his familiar stern face) to be permitted to undertake what seems like a suicidal journey into the Heart of Darkness. And yes, this does indeed often feel like a transplanted ‘nam flick weighed down by heavy religious overtones, from the Rescue Dawn-style torture and group imprisonment sequences to the quest for Neeson’s Colonel Kurtz figure.

Led by a Christian guide named Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozuka), who’s cast as a wretched Judas but proves to have a much more flexible and practical approach to apostasy and absolution than the stuffed-shirt priests, our solemn heroes soon find villages full of Christians who have been forced to conceal their faith. But when the feared, wily Inquisitor and his goons close in, they decide to separate and the film follows Rodrigues as he gets beardier and hairier until his luck runs out.

Scorsese, who once planned to become a priest, makes no secret of where his sympathies lie (the film is dedicated to “the Japanese Christians and their pastors”) and places the notion of apostasy centre stage, which may strike a chord with religious audiences who recognise a profound spiritual dilemma. But the secular punters he needs to bring in to secure a hit may be forgiven for wondering what the big deal is. As he’s repeatedly reminded, all unbending Rodrigues needs to do to save hordes of peasants from fiendish torture and grisly death is to stomp a symbolic muddy sandal on the face of Jesus. Causing others to suffer for his piousness while wondering when that God fella proposes to show up is not, to use the modern vernacular, a good look. Can’t he just cross his fingers behind his back, or something?

Andrew Garfield certainly gives good torment as the earnest if thinly drawn Rodrigues, but is perhaps a little too Hollywood handsome to convince as a 17th century Jesuit priest. The gaunt Adam Driver, on the other hand, really looks the part and one suspects that he was reduced to a subsidiary role simply because he’s not a big enough marquee name. Only in the last reel do the dry, self-flagellating ‘What would Jesus do?’ ruminations give way to wider concerns about intolerance that one suspects a less religiously inclined director would have chosen to foreground. But for many this will be too little, too late.