Silence (2016)
Silence (2016)
Dir. Martin Scorsese
Perhaps no filmmaker has been more challenging to serious Christian cinephiles than Martin Scorsese. Scorsese, himself a devout Catholic, is known for many things in the cinematic world – one of the greatest living filmmakers; a beacon of hope for the preservation of classic and foreign films; an indulgent and stylistic filmmaker with a particular fascination with the gangster genre; and a controversial director of religious films. It’s ironic that Scorsese would make his Catholic film Silence in between The Wolf of Wall Street and his gangster coda film, The Irishman. Both The Wolf of Wall Street and The Irishman were nominated for Best Picture and were largely appreciated from a critical and cultural standpoint, while Silence went under-the-radar. The Wolf of Wall Street set the record for the amount of F-words in a non-documentary feature film, with much explicit content to boot. The Irishman, produced and released through Netflix, addressed Scorsese’s career fascination with gangsters and fallen protagonists in the likes of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, GoodFellas, and The Departed. One could look at the career trajectory of Scorsese and see Silence as atonement for these sin-filled stories. Or one could see the movie as the final installment in his unofficial Faith trilogy of The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Kundun (1997), and Silence.
The Question of Silence
It is said that while preparing to film his uber-controversial The Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese was gifted the 1966 Japanese novel Chinmoku (in English, “Silence”) by Shūsaku Endō. Endō’s novel (considered one of the best Japanese novels of the 20th Century) follows two Portuguese Jesuit priests/missionaries as they seek to serve the persecuted Japanese Christians and see the Catholic-Christian faith blossom in the notably unchristian Japanese religious soil. Scorsese’s film—notably faithful to Endō’s novel—follows Andrew Garfield’s Father Rodrigues and Adam Driver’s Father Garupeas they seek to spread the gospel and find the fallen Jesuit priest, Father Ferreira (played by Liam Neeson). The main spiritual/theological dilemma comes when Father Rodrigues must choose between stepping on an icon of Jesus Christ (and thereby becoming an apostate of the Faith) and saving the Japanese Christians, or not stepping on the icon (and thus affirming his faith) and seeing the Japanese Christians he’s instructed to protect and serve be tortured and killed. Which is better – to protect one’s own faith and see others killed or sacrifice one’s own faith to save others. When I first watched the film, the answer to me was obvious – obviously don’t step on the icon and set the example of faith in the midst of trials and persecution. However, the more I sat with the film and its accompanying novel, the more I saw the conundrum as one that is grey without easy answers. The film asks hard questions without a simple way out.
Critic Matt Zoller Seitz says of the film, “Silence is a monumental work, and a punishing one. It puts you through hell with no promise of enlightenment, only a set of questions and propositions, sensations and experiences.” On the one hand, Father Rodrigues could maintain his faith, but see the torture and death of others; in this way, he puts himself above others. On the other hand, he could save the lives and faith of others by sacrificing his own wellbeing and faith; in this way, he becomes like Jesus Christ, himself who became nothing for the sake of others. Perhaps it is much easier for Rodrigues to be killed and immortalized as a martyr than to give up himself and live with the guilt of denying Christ. Scorsese’s 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ deals with a similar dilemma – does Jesus allow himself to be taken off the cross and live a comfortable life married to Mary Magdalene or does he continue with sacrificing his own desires to save others from spiritual death? Jesus and Rodrigues both end up choosing the same path – the spiritual sacrifice to save the lives of others. Zoller-Seitz again writes, “Is it moral to allow others to suffer when their suffering can be ended with a single symbolic gesture? Would God want that? Maybe the priest is destined to realize that it’s all right to apostatize if it ends the pain of others.”
The Answer of Silence
The larger question is the titular question of God’s silence in the face of persecution and suffering. As hard as Jesus and Rodrigeus’ situation is – where is God? Why doesn’t he provide an easy answer? Why doesn’t he deliver both the priests and the Japanese Christians from suffering? This question will come up whenever Christians endure suffering and evil themselves – where is God? Why does this have to happen? Why does God allow this? Where is he?? This question is one of theodicy. Each person’s theodicy is an answer to the great problem of evil and suffering that has been asked since the dawn of humanity. The answer of Silence comes through the voice of Christ in the most poignant moment of spiritual and emotional pain – “I understand your pain. I was born into this world to share men’s pain. I carried this cross for your pain. Your life is with me now. Step.” Jesus knows our pain and these difficult trials. It was, indeed, his last temptation.