My Rating : 7/10
Martin Scorsese's passion project of 25 years, 'Silence' is a religious movie dealing with themes of faith, doubt, hope, suffering, salvation and one's belief in God the Almighty - both sacred and profane.
The pacing of the film is purposefully slow with interesting cinematography to keep the viewer engaged with sparse narration and dialogue. It is Scorsese's most minimalist film and does away from his usual theatrical quality of violence - though there is some violence in the second half - an unusual combination of religion and violence not often seen in movies of this kind.
The strongest, clearest way to understand the story of Silence is through the character of Rodrigues, because his arc hangs on a double thread: that of his role as a European missionary in Japan - what from the 21st century might seem like a "white savior" complex - and that of his place as a priest struggling to understand how to imitate Christ and realizing, slowly, that he can't, or at least not the way he thought he should.
It's a long film and you really need to be in the mood for it to enjoy and absorb it fully as it is very simple and often gets repetitive.
Enjoy it for what it is, Scorsese seldom makes such arthouse movies, the others being The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Kundun (1997) and Silence (2016) which rounds up Scorsese's trilogy of spiritual films.
Martin Scorsese's passion project of 25 years, 'Silence' is a religious movie dealing with themes of faith, doubt, hope, suffering, salvation and one's belief in God the Almighty - both sacred and profane.
The pacing of the film is purposefully slow with interesting cinematography to keep the viewer engaged with sparse narration and dialogue. It is Scorsese's most minimalist film and does away from his usual theatrical quality of violence - though there is some violence in the second half - an unusual combination of religion and violence not often seen in movies of this kind.
The strongest, clearest way to understand the story of Silence is through the character of Rodrigues, because his arc hangs on a double thread: that of his role as a European missionary in Japan - what from the 21st century might seem like a "white savior" complex - and that of his place as a priest struggling to understand how to imitate Christ and realizing, slowly, that he can't, or at least not the way he thought he should.
It's a long film and you really need to be in the mood for it to enjoy and absorb it fully as it is very simple and often gets repetitive.
Enjoy it for what it is, Scorsese seldom makes such arthouse movies, the others being The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Kundun (1997) and Silence (2016) which rounds up Scorsese's trilogy of spiritual films.