44 Silence

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Lino
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44 Silence

#1 Post by Lino » Sat Aug 26, 2006 11:03 am

Silence

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Adapted from the renowned novel by Shusaku Endo, Masahiro Shinoda's 1971 film Silence (Chinmoku, co-written with Endo) explores the violent cultural conflict amid the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in seventeenth-century Japan. Shinoda's excellent direction — coupled with a pensive score by the legendary Toru Takemitsu — gives cinematic expression to inner spiritual paradox, and imbues with religious mystery a landscape that seems already sentient with wind, rain, and light.

Two Portuguese priests disembark upon an anonymous Japanese shore. Under cover of nightfall, they seek to infiltrate those Christian sects driven underground by a ruthless magistracy, and re-establish the foothold of the Church on the isolated island-nation. Soon, however, the priests find themselves drawn into the mire of persecution, and gradually learn the truth behind the ominous disappearance of another Catholic missionary decades earlier...

By way of a heavily made-up and polyglot Tetsuro Tanba (Assassination, Kwaidan, Samurai Spy), Silence builds toward a revelation that approaches the impact of Colonel Kurtz's entrance in Conrad's Heart of Darkness (or Marlon Brando's take on Kurtz in Coppola's Apocalypse Now). Rendered in a tender colour palette courtesy of master cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Yojimbo, Ugetsu monogatari), Silence unearths lies and beauty at the intersection of religion and Japanese society. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present for the first time on DVD in the UK Masahiro Shinoda's Silence — based upon the same novel that has intrigued American filmmaker Martin Scorsese for decades, and spurred his own work on a film adaptation of the source material.

Special Features

• Newly restored high-definition Toho transfer
• New and improved optional English subtitles
• Full-colour PDF facsimiles of two historical texts long out-of-print:
—- A History of the Missions in Japan and Paraguay by Cecilia Mary Caddell (314 pages, c. 1856)
—- Japan's Martyr Church by Sister Mary Bernard (130 pages, c. 1926)
• A 20-page booklet containing a new essay by writer Doug Cummings, and more...

mikeohhh
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#2 Post by mikeohhh » Fri Mar 23, 2007 8:56 pm

I gotta wonder: any chance of Martin Scorsese doing a commentary, introduction or essay for this?

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#3 Post by BrightEyes23 » Sat Mar 24, 2007 12:13 am

this is a really great film. i've got the R2 Japan disc so, unless the special features are spectacular, i won't be picking this up for quite some time, but for those who do NOT own the R2 disc, i'd consider it a must own.

I hope MoC rolls out more and more films from Japanese New Wave-ers...I'd kill a puppy with my bare hands for an imprint label from eureka or any other distributor to release an Art Theater Guild collection, featuring the works that were produced or co-produced by them.

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Cold Bishop
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#4 Post by Cold Bishop » Sat Mar 24, 2007 2:19 am

Terayama and Oshima, please....

But enough of that, this is excellent news. For a rather prolific director, too few of his work seems to be represented on DVD. (Granted, I have not looked at the Japanese release. I'm always iffy about non-English dvds... Unsubbed extras and the potential for a decent Western release always holds me back).

I also would love to see a Scorsese contribution, and to know how much this film in fact contributed to his interest in his own film version, as opposed to the novel.

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ltfontaine
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#5 Post by ltfontaine » Thu Mar 29, 2007 11:44 am

The director commentary tracks on the Shindo discs were so worthwhile, it's a shame that a similar feature isn't available to carry over and translate from the Japanese edition of this title. Japanese directors from this period are advancing in age (Shinoda is 76) and it would be valuable to more often capture their voices, speaking about their films, before they are gone.

As for Scorsese's version of Silence, has he ever indicated whether his long-term interest in the project was inspired by Shinoda's film or Endo's novel? If it is the latter, he may not be eager to advertise that he is already shadowing yet another movie from what he insists on referring to as “the great Asian film tradition,â€

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Michael Kerpan
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#6 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:04 pm

Shinoda is a very eloquent speaker -- who has lots to say. so I hope we can get some interviews with him (even if not full commentaries).

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sevenarts
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#7 Post by sevenarts » Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:06 pm

[quote="ltfontaine"]As for Scorsese's version of Silence, has he ever indicated whether his long-term interest in the project was inspired by Shinoda's film or Endo's novel? If it is the latter, he may not be eager to advertise that he is already shadowing yet another movie from what he insists on referring to as “the great Asian film tradition,â€

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GringoTex
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#8 Post by GringoTex » Thu Mar 29, 2007 12:15 pm

[quote="ltfontaine"] If it is the latter, he may not be eager to advertise that he is already shadowing yet another movie from what he insists on referring to as “the great Asian film tradition,â€

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ltfontaine
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#9 Post by ltfontaine » Thu Mar 29, 2007 1:36 pm

Is this the same Scorsese who gave "Andrew Lau's original film from Hong Kong" a shout out in his Oscar acceptance speech?
Yup, the same one who omitted mention of Lau, Alan Mak (writer and co-director), or Infernal Affairs from his acceptance speech at the Golden Globes. To have snubbed Lau and Mak a second time this way, at the Academy Awards, would have been unforgivable. Did he mention Mak or the actual title of the Hong Kong film during his AA speech? I don't remember.

In interviews for The Departed, Scorsese consistently played down Infernal Affairs, framing it as a point of departure for Monahan's script, which Scorsese has praised effusively. Maybe this is all by the book, and Scorsese is certainly entitled to an artist's proprietary ego, but he is usually so generous and respectful with fellow filmmakers that his faint acknowledgement of Lau's and Mak's film has sounded an odd, sour note.

I hope the Hong Kong auteurs are getting a piece of the U.S. DVD sales for the Infernal Affairs disc and box set, both selling well these days, and that the advance buzz about Scorsese's Silence has a similarly salutary effect on sales of MoC's edition of the Shinoda film.

EDIT: Interestingly, Scorsese's acceptance speech is the only major award for which there is no video on the Golden Globes section of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association website.

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What A Disgrace
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#10 Post by What A Disgrace » Mon Jul 02, 2007 8:35 pm

Specs at Play.

- Full-colour PDF facsimiles of two historical texts long out-of-print: A History of the Missions in Japan and Paraguay by Cecilia Mary Caddell (314 pages, c. 1856) Japan's Martyr Church by Sister Mary Bernard (130 pages, c. 1926)
- A 20-page booklet containing a new essay by writer Doug Cummings, and more...

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#11 Post by cana7cl » Mon Jul 02, 2007 10:30 pm

- Full-colour PDF facsimiles of two historical texts long out-of-print: A History of the Missions in Japan and Paraguay by Cecilia Mary Caddell (314 pages, c. 1856) Japan's Martyr Church by Sister Mary Bernard (130 pages, c. 1926)

Well, it seems I gotta get a new laser printer sooner than expected.

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The Fanciful Norwegian
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#12 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Tue Jul 03, 2007 12:09 am

Not to take away anything from the MOC gang, but both of those books are available at Archive.org for those who don't want to wait.

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#13 Post by peerpee » Wed Aug 01, 2007 2:07 pm

From the finished MoC disc:

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tavernier
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#14 Post by tavernier » Wed Aug 01, 2007 3:45 pm

Sweet!

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Luke M
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#15 Post by Luke M » Wed Aug 01, 2007 9:46 pm

Great! I have this and Bellissima pre-ordered from amazon. Can't wait.

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feckless boy
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#16 Post by feckless boy » Mon Aug 13, 2007 8:13 am

From mastersofcinema.org:
...with a pensive score by the legendary Toru Takemitsu
"Pensive" is almost an understatement here. Think John Dowland meets Karlheinz Stockhausen. Might rub some viewers the wrong way.

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TheGodfather
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#17 Post by TheGodfather » Wed Aug 15, 2007 3:00 pm

Those images look awesome. Got it on pre-order @ thehut.com already, together with Bellissima as well.

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MichaelB
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#18 Post by MichaelB » Wed Aug 15, 2007 3:54 pm

feckless boy wrote:"Pensive" is almost an understatement here. Think John Dowland meets Karlheinz Stockhausen. Might rub some viewers the wrong way.
Yes, that's a very fair description - but I love the way that the horribly dissonant passages seem to grow organically out of the main theme, even as they're completely undermining it.

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Person
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#19 Post by Person » Wed Aug 15, 2007 4:47 pm

Damn. Archetypal Japanese color cinematography. I will definitely buy this.

I visited a Japanese art exibit today which focused on the early days of Japanese art and ideas coming to Europe and I was blown away. I had never seen samurai armour up close before and they are incredible works of art in themselves. What a culture! It's sad that Japan allowed so much Western influence (and madness) into their country. I can't wait to see Silence.

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MichaelB
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#20 Post by MichaelB » Wed Aug 15, 2007 5:11 pm

Person wrote:It's sad that Japan allowed so much Western influence (and madness) into their country.
Well, you'll love Silence, then - which is all about the Japanese trying not to allow Western influences into their country!

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Person
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#21 Post by Person » Sun Aug 19, 2007 11:15 am


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MichaelB
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#22 Post by MichaelB » Sun Aug 19, 2007 11:39 am

I'm highly suspicious of that review - it doesn't match what I saw at all. And my disc definitely did have a menu!

Somewhere in my voluminous files I have an early check disc which Nick specifically asked me not to review - I'll dig it out and see how different it is from the final product.

(That said, I did have a nitpick with the final version - why were English speakers forced to put up with obtrusive Japanese subtitles?)

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#23 Post by What A Disgrace » Sun Aug 19, 2007 11:41 am

What a dumpy review.

I can't wait to have this disc. Its probably magnificent.

peerpee
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#24 Post by peerpee » Sun Aug 19, 2007 11:45 am

For a number of reasons -- but mostly the ridiculous "fullscreen" diss -- I think it's fair to say the reviewer is a cretin. (BTW They reviewed a menuless screener that did not include the finished encode).
MichaelB wrote:(That said, I did have a nitpick with the final version - why were English speakers forced to put up with obtrusive Japanese subtitles?)
The Japanese text appears on the few instances where there is English dialogue because that was ingrained into the HD-CAM master and no other restored versions without that text had been made. We kept in mind that during these sequences there's already an "inbetweenness" in the languages occurring inside of the film. The priests are "speaking" English, but they're supposed to be Portuguese, and what they're mouthing doesn't correspond to either the Japanese they speak, or the English they speak. English exists as this sort of "stand-in" foreign-tongue in the film. I think there are some very sly things happening here on Shinoda's part with regard to the treatment of language. (The title card of the film itself reads: 'Chinmoku / Silence' -- quite odd for a Japanese film to announce itself as a 'bilingual' Japanese + English work right off the bat.) Something we've kept on the packaging of the film.

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MichaelB
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#25 Post by MichaelB » Sun Aug 19, 2007 12:02 pm

I left a comment pointing out that while he's entitled to his opinion of the film, he clearly was not reviewing a final production disc.

I watched it last weekend on a 43" rear-projection telly, and it looked magnificent - Nick's screengrabs give an entirely fair account.

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