If Silence had not been directed by the great American filmmaker Martin Scorsese, I likely would not have sought it out at all. A historical movie of "epic" proportions (its running time, its historical period, and most notably, the characters' need to speak in an oddly accented broken English), it takes place in mid seventeenth century Japan, where two young Portuguese priests (played by Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) have arrived to search for their mentor, Father Ferriera (Liam Neeson), and also to spread the gospel of Christ. The fact that Christianity is forbidden in feudal Japan, and is punishable by death, adds an element of danger and intrigue to this otherwise long and rather slow moving film. As adapted by Scorsese and Jay Cocks (from a novel of the same name by Shusaku Endo), the screenplay would have you believe that even common peasants in 1640s Japan spoke nearly perfect English, an element I have a hard time believing. Ultimately, the movie is a hybrid of Arthur Miller's The Crucible and pretty much any Akira Kurosawa Samurai movie, where Christian persecution and forced apostasy go hand in hand with inhumane torture and murder of the faithful. Silence is an ambitious film, and a passion project of Scorsese's for over a quarter century, but its analysis and dissection of faith vs. mercy is a bit old fashioned for today's digital age. Had the movie been made a few hundred years ago (an impossible concept, I realize, but you get my drift), I imagine its themes would've been much more relevant.
C+
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