74.  74 is the age of the little fellow with the big glasses known also as Martin Scorsese, one of the greatest directors of all time, and probably my favorite one.  74 years of age and he still comes out guns blazing right this second with a three hour epic on Christianity, doubt and above all, the importance of faith.  The movie carries the the following title – Silence – just like its source novel written by Shusaku Endo, a Japanese writer whose book influenced Scorsese to make the picture already back in 1989. 28 years of waiting. 28 years of constant fighting for a project that surely won’t have any commercial success. 28 years of faith.

The story is that of two Christian missionaries from Portugal traveling to Japan in the 17th century in order to find out what happened with their guide and mentor, Padre Ferrera, a priest who went missing seven years before the actual story takes place, and who apparently apostatized after having been tortured.  Christianity at the time was outlawed by the Japanese officials and anybody who refused to accept Buddhism as their religion ended up being tortured and eventually, killed. Padre Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield, never better, seriously) and Padre Garrpe (Adam Driver, brilliant as always) are young, inexperienced and naive, but they believe in one thing – their endless love for God.  As they arrive in Japan,not too far from Nagasaki, they find a small Christian community made up of loyal peasants who devote their lives, risking them every single day, to God.  It is there and then that the two priests realize how dangerous their presence is in that region of the world.  With each breath they take, which each baptism they organize and with each blessing they give, the authorities get closer and closer to the source of this ‘evil’ religion.  It is odd to put it like this, but Endo’s religious tale is like a great coming of age story and Scorsese’s film feels more like a video essay on a subject he is so passionate about rather than just a generic historical drama.

This is the difference between a real artist and someone who just happened to pick up a camera.  In every frame of Silence there is belief, originality and calculation.  Like in his less popular works, such as Kundun, The Age of Innocence or one of my personal favorites, The Last Temptation of Christ, the director approaches each shot with the eye of a visual scientist and born storyteller.  In this case, the film feels like his most personal one to date. Perhaps it’s because the entire project had been held up for 28 years, or perhaps because Scorsese himself wanted to become a priest at some point in his life and religion had often been an underlying theme in his movies. Also, it has that tender feel like the earlier Scorsese pictures used to have. Why? Well, after six years of digital the director decided to go back to shooting on film, almost as if he wanted himself to go back in time, to his days of youth, madness, drugs and spirituality. It all adds up to a composed and organized presentation of a story that in other hands might have been mishandled and chewed up. Notice the use of steady shots, and even during movement, Scorsese’s camera (operated by Rodrigo Prieto, the cinematographer of Scorsese’s previous movie, The Wolf of Wall Street) tracks step by step, extremely slow and composed. It is perhaps the director’s aim to make us suffer too, because for those of you who want to go and see this film, brace yourselves for quite a few scenes of extreme torture.  Don’t get me wrong.  Again, Scorsese’s violence in this movie is unflinching but it is more psychological rather than physical (graphic).  The pain comes from the inner conflict of the two priests, and mainly Rodrigues, who has to watch his devoted Japanese followers die in the name of God, tied to a cross and forced into the sea or burned alive on a stake, screaming in agony, or worse, keeping silent through all of it.  When Rodrigues kneels down praying, he begins whispering words of prayer, which quickly become meaningless to him, as he notices that whether or not he asks God to come down and help these poor, innocent creatures, God will remain silent.  He is put to the test and ordered to renounce his God. If he does not obey more people will die because of his arrogance and pride.  At some point Ferrera (Liam Neeson) says “Do you have the right to make them suffer? I heard the cries of suffering in the same cell. And I acted.”   Silence is the source of inner conflict not only for Rodrigues but also for Kichijiro, Rodrigues’ Japanese guide who keeps betraying him and asking for forgiveness like a wandering, lost child.  Kichijiro represents the common mortal sinner who keeps going back to his old habits, hoping for a miracle to come and save him from himself. Silence is also the source of inner conflict for the viewer, at least that is how I felt about it.  Scorsese has built an epic that will cut deep into your heart because he knows how powerful cinema can be.  A story of the faith of one man, one priest, can soon enough turn out to be the story of one nation, one world.   Two hours and forty one minutes go by and at end of it you truly feel speechless because in some way or another, you have taken part in a cinematic confession.  It is my belief that Scorsese has made this movie in order to tell his own experience with religion, his own experience with the hostile world of success and critical failure he’s had over the last few decades. Like Padre Ferrera, he too had renounced certain values he believed in when he was a young man with already a couple of Oscar nominations under his belt. He too, like those three priests and those Japanese peasants, came from nothing and had to sacrifice a whole lot to become the man he is today.  That is how a master works – with some of the best acting of the year (Adam Driver steals every scene he is in, Garfield carries the film all the way through and Neeson adds humanity and understanding to a painful ending), glorious cinematography that captures not only the grim and foggy landscapes (filmed in Taiwan) but above all, the faces of the poor, the rich, the tortured and the privileged, and last but not least the direction of a true professional and the editing done by a long time friend (Thelma Schoonmaker, still the best in the business), Scorsese makes you think about yourself. Re-evaluate yourself. He makes you question your identity, your beliefs, your motivations.  For him, silence is everywhere and it is the only sound there is in the whole wide world. But perhaps, it’s us who create it. Perhaps…

Just perhaps…