Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

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hearthesilence
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#201 Post by hearthesilence » Tue Jan 24, 2017 12:12 am

Drucker wrote:Garfield's desperation was excellent throughout the film. The viewer always seems to know as much as him, never more. We question and are lost when he is lost. We live through moments with him. I really thought highly of his performance, and while Adam Driver is a better actor overall, his demeanor and character were better suited for the role he played.
I agree with this as well. I've seen others say that they wished Driver was in Garfield's role simply because he's the better actor, but Drucker's pretty spot on. Garfield's boyishness also fits his role and his character's outlook better too. It may even make him more sympathetic, coming off as someone more vulnerable when his character is lost- more than Driver, Garfield feels like the type of young man who, despite his sturdiness, will fall much harder when he's finally crushed.

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#202 Post by Cronenfly » Mon Jan 30, 2017 2:37 am

matrixschmatrix wrote:I also haven't seen the Shinoda or read the book, but to me, the key to the ending is this:
SpoilerShow
The crucifix Garfield's character still has is the Japanese-made one. There is a lot of argument between Neeson and Garfield about whether the Japanese were ever truly Christian, and I think this symbol is vital to the movie's outlook on that- they weren't, in Neeson's sense, because their belief could never fit into the ordered (and ultimately imperialist) Catholicism that sent them on the mission; theirs is a specifically Japanese Christianity, one that exists in an atmosphere of fear and oppression, one that is secret and internal and unbelievably powerful. Garfield doesn't keep his own faith; he is an apostate, and by the rules of the Catholic Church, he is going to hell. He spends his days rejecting Euro Christian symbols. He is a convert- to the religion of the people he truly loved and wanted to protect.
This interpretation has been praised already in this thread, but I wanted to add my applause to the chorus. I found this a taxing film and often tough to watch, but it has grown in my mind since. This (matrix's post) is the best kind of careful reading, and I would encourage anyone on the fence to see the film on the big screen while you can (if you still can). It really benefits from your being held captive to the dilemma Garfield's character is in, and made me ask the kinds of difficult questions of myself I do not often ask while watching many large release movies these days.

One does not have to be religious by any means to appreciate what Scorsese is up to here, and that is all the more to his credit, I think; I likewise found a queasy, complex amount of contemporary relevance to the film, intended or not, to do with isolationism and the convenient political persecution of certain groups. I like that there are really no clear villains or heroes here, simply those who survive and those who do not, and I think now that I failed to give Scorsese and his collaborators enough credit initially for the level of sophistication they demonstrate on this point. It is not even necessarily a question of which characters are most willing to compromise their beliefs in order to keep on living, but the vagaries of fate that make that willingness (or lack thereof) into a sort of cosmic joke. When the circumstances you find yourself under are difficult enough (and even or perhaps especially if your own arrogance and sense of self-importance are a large part of what placed you there), it can be impossible to assess what the correct way to proceed is. I recognize this kind of spiritual struggle in my own life, and only hope that there are better outcomes for the world right now than there are for many of those featured in this film.

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Clarence
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#203 Post by Clarence » Thu Feb 23, 2017 9:16 pm

Out on Blu-Ray on March 28th. Includes a documentary about the making of the film and interviews with the cast.


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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#205 Post by MoonlitKnight » Sat Apr 15, 2017 10:35 pm

Unless I glossed over it in my perusal of this thread, I'm surprised no one has brought up the odd, almost fey inquisitor. It was the aspect of the film of which I knew the least to make. :-k

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#206 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Apr 15, 2017 10:47 pm

The same actor played the odd, almost fey Emperor Hirohito in Sokurov's The Sun. ;-)

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#207 Post by oh yeah » Sat Apr 15, 2017 11:16 pm

Whoa, what the hell? I completely missed the fact that this came out on Blu already, and in March at that. I'll have to check it out and might even blind-buy because I like Scorsese enough to trust it's at least "good." But how on Earth did it come out so quickly? It was in theaters here in January, and premiered just in late December, right? I guess it makes sense given how brief its wide theatrical run was, though -- part of why I haven't seen it yet is 'cause it was only showing for a week! -- and also how much of a financial flop it was. It could've been way worse, though, especially as a 40 mil flop in 2016 is nothing at all on the scale of, say, a 44 mil flop in 1980 (you know the one). But still, not even making back 20... not great. (According to Wiki, anyway).

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#208 Post by FrauBlucher » Sun Apr 16, 2017 8:50 am

I could see this down the road, maybe 5 years or so, getting released by Criterion based on it's backstory as much as the film itself. It will be interesting to see if this film grows in stature amongst cinephiles.


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colinr0380
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#210 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Apr 17, 2017 11:16 am

I liked this a lot but I'm approaching a lot of this cold, in the sense that I still have not seen the 1971 version of this material (which I'm even more interested in doing now as I kind of want to see if my issues with the central character are a matter of performance or something more inherent to the character himself) and that I'm really not that religious at all, which probably means a lot of the more brutal moments of religious rituals getting sullied did not have as great of a 'shock, horror' impact on me (perhaps that was the reason for introduction the torture elements that cross all boundaries to make an audience wince? Although I have other thoughts on that below)

It really seemed to me though that (like Wise Blood in some ways) all of the attention paid to forcing someone to give up their faith, on paper at least, through continual 'confirmatory' acts of apostasy really showed more the deep insecurity/fascination of the rulers towards encroaching Christianity. If it was so unimportant and could be 'cured' so easily through executions, denial and conversion after being victoriously paraded through the streets as examples to the rest of the population, then why is so much stock placed in making a big show of apostatising (to such an extent that it looks like there must be a factory commissioned to produce beautiful rectangular foot-shaped images of Jesus and Mary for people to step on!), and doing so over and over again? Maybe that's why this also ties in well with the wave of films about the efficacy of torture in the wake of the "War on Terror", in that it becomes less about the victim revealing their secrets but about the torturer being entirely satisfied with the fullness of the confession, which they never really can be.

Though it also brings up ideas of martyrdom being something for the faithful to somehow 'aspire' to, and the greatest affirmation of your faith that you can make being to die for it. You can never be a true martyr without there also being a villain to oppress and torture you to death (similar to the way that you cannot confess without committing a sin to atone for). Perhaps martyrdom itself is inherently selfish (or at least manufactured), as you leave a lot of people behind after your individual 'great' act, whether noble or futile (perhaps the main reason for the Garupe subplot).

This might be because the type of Christianity here is seemingly a bit more Portuguese Catholic-leaning, but there was a lot of stock placed in idols and iconography here. Its a film dealing with a difficult, extremely intangible subject in that sense, as it is perhaps necessary for a film to provide tangible evidence of a 'show of faith' in such items but this material is also focused on being about much more than the objects themselves. Much like the rituals are important in providing a sense of community and a bond between people but in religious terms it should be more about the meaning and intent behind performing an act than the physical act itself (the crux of the whole film really from the Kichijiro and Mokichi subplots to the act of stepping on the idol itself)

This is perhaps where I have issues with the central character of Rodrigues, finding him rather slow to catch on to a lot of the bigger issues swirling around him. Particularly the one that is heavily implied by the film but never dealt with in its narrow, entirely religiously focused scope on this single character - the way that religion is so dangerous because of the threat it poses to those who control Japanese society, politically and culturally (both from outside forces and internal dissent) and that is why all this apostatising and converting is necessary, as well as brutally putting down internal 'rebellion' from the norms (in that sense Rodrigues is the bigger symbolic figure, turned into the perfect Jesus-lookalike figure first in his own delirium at the stream and then in captivity when his beard and hair are allowed to grow out. Yet we are dealing with the 'last Priests' to be sent as missionaries to Japan, so the threat from the outside has almost disappeared at this point. Despite the film dealing with these last priests the true threats to the status quo in the film are the anonymous, interchangeable Japanese peasants who can be tortured to death in droves but yet still have deep-rooted beliefs in spite of that). Its a battle of hegemonies as much as between 'the one true religion' and another, and that's something that Rodrigues never really seems to understand. His character is much more internally, conscience driven in his actions, but that suggests a certain kind of solipsism to his behaviour that kind of aggravated me. But I guess aggravated me in a good way as, heinous torture aside, I was constantly more interested in the discussions put forward by Inoue and the interpreter in the second half of the film, even if I often thought that they were talking in codified terms far over Rodrigues's head! Or talking about more complex, worldy matters than Rodrigues, always with an eye to Heaven, was appreciating. While the acts committed were horrible, and I think this film generally errs a bit too much towards having a 'Japan being a dangerous irreligious country' approach to the material (which probably makes sense from the perspective of the main characters), I felt there was an understandable insecurity there from the rulers towards the idea of 'dangerous ideas spreading from outside the borders and infecting the local populace'. That's an insecurity which is still current today, perhaps more so with the internet.

I also liked the way that Liam Neeson's appearance as Ferreira in the final section could be considered the equivalent of the final act of The Last Temptation of Christ! Although in this case its not a delirious reverie of an alternate life from someone more than human but still painfully a man, but more an actual post-Christianity humble life until a final moment of (witnessed by the film if by no other character) redemption. I'm not sure that I really think Rodrigues was a particularly powerful (or even interesting) character, more a rather blinkered one (especially in the rather ambiguous 1984-esque scene of checking items for marks of Christianity, where I got the impression that while almost unknowably ambiguous Ferreira might be willing to let a couple of items slip through the net, that Rodrigues as a new convert would maybe apply his sincere, almost amoral, diligence to this new task he had been given, as he had to his previous quest. There could be an interesting thesis to be written about the question of whether any of Scorsese's leading characters actually 'deserve' to be at the helm of a story revolving around them, but then that can also be what makes those flawed characters all the more human and in need of the focus in itself), but still a human being worthy of dignity and his own conscience and internal life. Someone who perhaps could have prepared those who looked to him for guidance and comfort better than he did, perhaps using his own doubts and views on faith (different to Garupe's) to tell people that apostatising would not be the end - that one of the greatest aspects of Christianity is that aspect of forgiveness for trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. That external renouncements are the currency of the physical world, but the faith within is the aspect that truly means the most. Even in a world (even today) that is more concerned with the outward performing of rites and rituals as the most important aspect of a person's faith, where there is no point in doing something unless it is witnessed by others (and thereby confirms the watcher's inherent authority, whether the magistrate or the priest, by being deferred to). That you can be forced to renounce your faith, spit on the cross, step on the idol and still be a good Christian within yourself.

But I think that is probably why I'd make a terrible priest! These are issues that go far beyond official doctrine though into uncharted territory of the human soul, and I think this intertwines well with that idea that travelling to a distant country to spread the good word isn't just a one way affair and can often result in faith taking on new (and perhaps unorthodox) forms, both externally and internally.

___


Filmically, I really liked that the striking top down shot which initially seems like a rather overdone God's eye point of view in the early shots of the priests walking down the steps of their church and into the wider world and in the shot of the boat reaching the dangerous shores of Japan (as well as reminiscent of that shot of the Dalai Lama surrounded by an endless sea of bodies in Kundun), but eventually turns up again in the most perfect manner as the point of view of Rodrigues looking down on the idol that he has to step on. Almost looking down on God, or at least an image of the same. But it also ties together that sense of 'God' as a Christian figure, looking down on the Earth from on high, and 'God' as an aspect within each and every one of us, guiding our conscience and our actions. (Even if Rogrigues's 'God voice' in that apostitising scene sounds a little like Ferreira's! Maybe he's still being tricked by honeyed words!)

I also really liked the, for lack of a better term, 'environmentalism' of the film, or maybe 'elementalism'! While the priests are wrestling with internal, voiceover narration issues, the real epiphanal aspect to the film feels to be the landscape of this foreign country itself, such as in the moment where the priests first get caught (but revealed to be in a good way) when they leave the dark hut to sunbathe. There's the division between the sun and water too. The sun is what Ferreira gestures to in order to illustrate his view of how the Japanese have interpreted the "Sun of God", and there is that final funeral pyre to close out events, but really water seems to be the far more important element in Japanese culture (and understandably so for an island culture). The transcendental torture of the villagers on their crosses takes place in the sea, as does Garupe's test for apostasy and death (while Rodrigues's own test is more 'earthy'). There are many boat journeys too of course. But the most powerful moments come when sun and water interact - the obscuring, intangible fog; Ferreira's vision of his fellow priests being tortured at the onsen hot springs; Mokichi's water filled body placed on the funeral pyre and producing plumes of steam. Those are where the most violent reactions are seen, from the painful clashes between the two elements producing a third, new byproduct.

For me, I think that the journey of the cross that Mokichi makes for Rodrigues was the most important aspect of the entire film, getting into that conflict between iconography and 'true' faith. On reaching the first village Rodrigues has been giving away whatever Christian symbols he has away to the peasants, who need the comfort such an object can provide more than he does. Mokichi repays that action by giving Rodrigues a small cross he has fashioned, just before he is brutally executed a few scenes later. That reciprocal gift feels like an extremely powerful moment for showing the first flowerings of people actually taking control of their own faith, rather than waiting for (arguably) benevolent foreign priests to arrive on their shores and preach to them. (This is also the aspect that slightly aggravated me with Rodrigues's character - why not try to teach people to become priests themselves, so that you will not leave them entirely abandoned if you have to move on from the village, or renounce your own faith, or God forbid, die?). Mokichi has created that symbol as a gift to a person who meant so much to him, not just as a token of faith but as a personal mark of friendship too. One that means all the more when Mokichi is tortured to death almost immediately afterwards.

That for me, after saying above that icons and objects don't matter at all, wonderfully complicates this aspect of putting all your faith into an object. In a way that small cross means more in this film than any of the beautiful gold images of Mary or Jesus laid on the ground to be walked upon (it is lucky that they did not find out the personal significance of that small cross, as that would have made the apostitising scene all the worse!), and that lent a beautifully touching sense of ambiguity to that final image inside the coffin. The small cross standing both as a defiant symbol of faith in the face of forced denial, but also a deeply personal symbolic object of a friendship and bond across cultures. A memento of one seemingly insignificant moment kept close at hand for an entire life after. Even as not a particularly religious person, I shed a tear at that.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Mon Jan 29, 2018 8:36 am, edited 17 times in total.

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#211 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Apr 17, 2017 11:18 am

I'd also add that, as much as I enjoyed a film set in this era dealing with religious intolerances, the more pressing film on a very similar subject that feels important to be made now would be about the Arab Christians in the Middle East. Though that would be dealing with an even more complicated (and potentially inflammatory) set of society versus religion issues!

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#212 Post by knives » Tue Aug 15, 2017 10:49 am

mfunk9786 wrote:I didn't care for this very much. It was incredibly repetitive and dragged out, which is a reality for the characters but shouldn't have to be for the viewer. No one could've really predicted how inert Scorsese was capable of making this picture, but once Driver and Garfield arrive in Japan, we're essentially watching a Salo-esque series of cycles: torture, followed by villainous lecturing, followed by torture, followed by villainous lecturing...

And not much solace to be found in any shades of grey - Christian imperialists and Japanese Christians are your heroes here, are your saints here. They are being persecuted, and that's all there is to it. Of course, they were persecuted, but they were also historically in the wrong nearly as much as those who responded to their intrusion into Japanese culture with violence - and none of that is explored or really even hinted at here. I felt I learned more about this time period on the train ride home reading articles and encyclopedia entries than I did while watching Silence, and again, I certainly understand if Scorsese's intent is not to educate the viewer, but if not there is very little here beyond a parable about the folly of stubborn pride. And I'm not sure that's a three hour story.
This and Nosy Lena's replies hits on the major problem I have with the film's first hour which drags down the otherwise okay film Scorsese made in the other 100 minutes. I quite like The Last Temptation of Christ and generally put it down as a good counter to Gibson's masochistic masturbation, but this film does just exactly that, but with less well done special effects. The film hits the same beat over and over again with a vacuous, perhaps purposefully, voice over that just dulls the whole thing. As cinema it doesn't work and as a prelude to the second part's essay format it doesn't need to be this long at all. The film does pick up a little when it decides to go for overstylized insanity (the makeup on the villain of the middle section is great), but that is merely an aesthetic pleasure in a film that wants to be taken seriously. On this base level I suspect if the first hour was cut in half and got to the meat of the film quicker I might have found this end product better (that's basically what Shinoda did).

I'm also not sure if the subtitles here are racist or not given the chronic misspelling of words. I guess the movie is pretty though.

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#213 Post by hearthesilence » Fri Nov 02, 2018 3:53 pm

Dylan wrote:
Sat Aug 20, 2016 10:02 pm
A Scorsese dream project that came under Harvey Weinstin's scissor hands. Weinstein in made Scorsese change a lot too
Perhaps the most well-known change made to Gangs of New York was the rejection of a fully recorded original score by Elmer Bernstein, one of the composer's last scores before his death in 2004. The rejected score was released by Varese Sarabande in 2007 (in a box set that included two other rejected Elmer Bernstein scores - all amazing) and having heard it I must say that it would've elevated the film immeasurably.

The full story of what exactly happened with Bernstein's score hasn't been documented (I don't believe Scorsese or Weinstein, nor Thelma Schoonmaker, have ever publicly commented on it), but Bernstein said in a 2003 interview:

“On Gangs of New York, Marty could never quite make up his mind about what he wanted. Then, he got into this long, painful edit. I wrote way back, nine months ago, some music for the film. I went over it with him. But as he went along, he began to have some other concept of what he wanted. He winds up with a Scorsese score, a pastiche.”

This makes it sound like it was largely Scorsese's decision, and maybe it was, but I've heard rumors in subsequent years that Weinstein wanted Bernstein's music gone early on and Scorsese fought for it but ultimately lost..
And just saw this too - whatever rumors you heard are probably unreliable. Bernstein's account is probably the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#214 Post by Boosmahn » Wed May 19, 2021 10:17 pm

What a difference a rewatch can make. I appreciated Silence the first time around but didn't really feel its full power until rewatching it a few days ago. This is a moving, thought-provoking film about faith.

I don't understand the criticisms of the length. Every scene has a purpose, and I can't imagine cutting any of them out. To make the plight of Rodrigues believable and meaningful, we needed to spend this much time with his character. A 160-minute runtime isn't even that long! I also recall reading criticisms that the conflict isn't relatable to non-Christian viewers, which is something else I don't quite understand. The turmoil the Jesuits and Japanese Christians face is more humanist than strictly religious. However, while I would not call myself Christian, I have some experience with the religion.

One thing confused me in both of my viewings of the film: why was Rodrigues surprised to learn who the Inquisitor was? His age, or maybe how Rodrigues was brought before him so quickly?

A final note: one commenter said they "shuddered to imagine what Mel Gibson would have done with the material," which I found very funny. I haven't seen The Passion of the Christ, but I have seen Hacksaw Ridge, and that symbolic shot of Doss being lowered absolutely merits the word "cringeworthy." (I still liked Hacksaw Ridge, for the record.)

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#215 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed May 19, 2021 10:37 pm

I'm glad you liked it, and this is a case where reading Shūsaku Endō's novel as supplementary material is vital, in my opinion. It's a brisk 200 pages, and much of the narrative's strength is in Rodrigues' own growing awareness, and eventually skewed internal thoughts of psychological dysregulation, regarding the contradictions of faith and practice: not only between social contexts but within his own impetus for his profession in wanting to emulate Christ as being inherently selfish and related to sinful pride, and then musing about what matters more in actions of utility or belief as it relates to his decision to apostate. Of course these rationalizations become quite layered in a relentless philosophical rabbit hole of mental flooding, and this isn't something any filmmaker can appropriately convey, but Scorsese does a very good job at finding other spaces to demonstrate these ideas in film language (which, I think, is why the film needs its runtime to really slow down an otherwise speedy plot and meditate on the details surrounding the progression).

It's been a while since I've seen it, but doesn't he become surprised because the inquisitor is the very man he's been talking to or in the presence of? This is not only an obvious shock for anyone, to be requesting an unknown man who is actually known and present, but it may also shatter some hope of getting an impartial third party who may be more receptive to his good will.

In a sense this shatters his 'faith', however ignorant, that he continues to hold onto regarding the good will of mankind as homogenous under Christ's teachings, discounting the contextual cultural factors impeding this utopian fantasy- which is really assuming that everyone has a western focal point of conscience to unlock. Mankind may be good, but everyone has their own framework to assess what is right, and Rodrigues' own cognitive journey of flexing his definitions of Christ's principles from the superficial coatings, and overall comprehension of what faith means, is really what this moment ignites in some form.

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#216 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed May 19, 2021 10:49 pm

TWBB -- Have you also seen Shinoda's adaptation? I like both movies -- but probably prefer the book itself.

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#217 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed May 19, 2021 10:57 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:
Wed May 19, 2021 10:49 pm
TWBB -- Have you also seen Shinoda's adaptation? I like both movies -- but probably prefer the book itself.
Yeah I have, and it's good but I prefer the Scorsese, for reasons I actually outlined already in the Shinoda's Silence thread!:
therewillbeblus wrote:
Tue May 19, 2020 2:33 pm
I finally watched this adaptation and feel like if going by faithfulness to the novel it's roughly the same as the Scorsese. I prefer the more recent one as its length is necessary to draw out the movement through acclimating to the culture. I also felt like the Shinoda film glossed over a lot of the Japanese rationale for devotion as well as the motivating consequences of meaning in the missionaries' own dedications to their humanist duties as blended with religious. The first half of the Shinoda film is what suffers the most from this lack of attention to the possibilities of grace, which in the novel (and somewhat in the Scorsese film) really expanded my peripheries to why these missionaries engage on their missions, on both a personal level of gratification and in satisfaction with the teachings of Christ. While it's present here too, the depth of the voiceover in the Scorsese is key to the book's power of internalized conflict in weighing faith across these humanist beliefs, which begin to present as more diverging ethical dilemmas over time.

I cannot recommend the book highly enough, as it's one of the best documentations of the inner thoughts of a man getting beaten down physically and psychologically as he continues to philosophically process his definitions of spirituality (it's also only 200 pages!). There is a subtle indication that the clinging to the rigid practices of his faith could be psychologically in place for selfless beliefs in this as the holiest act a person can make, or they could be a subconsciously self-focused desire for him to become Jesus and thus hang onto an identity at the expense of saving lives. The juxtaposition of the tangible pragmatic realities that people will die because of his non-actions as actions, which magnifies responsibility on him and splits the values of his religion to superficial desecrations of icons vs empathic liberations, with his internal stakes in the choice as a crucial factor that he seems to be facing for the first time.

The subtleties become less subtle over time and the book reaches a crescendo that is impossible to be translated in all its internal complexity onto the screen, as these contradictions charged by forceful accountability boils up acutely into his consciousness (think of the internalized shame and psychological defenses from the personal history of alcoholism in The Shining's novel, which Kubrick wisely threw away for the film as they were unadaptable- though this book is much more dense in that area, and more philosophical than emotional). Scorsese actually did try to tackle this with as much success as I think anyone could have, and deserve props for it. The Shinoda is a great film in many respects, though this piece ultimately feels slightly less powerful than the 2016 version, though I am admittedly going to judge by my obsession with the book.
Agreed that the book is best, but how could it not be with the psychosocial direction of its material? I recall it being similarly ruthless in terms of an obsessive-compulsive inner monologue to Woodcutters and Lolita, in case anyone over in the books thread wants to take that as a rec..

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#218 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed May 19, 2021 11:20 pm

I thought that (perhaps) one got a better sense of why the Japanese leader saw Christianity as dangerous in Shinoda (but it has been a long time since I last saw this). The Endo Museum near Nagasaki gave equal prominence to both adaptations. ;-)

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#219 Post by Boosmahn » Thu May 20, 2021 12:15 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed May 19, 2021 10:37 pm
It's been a while since I've seen it, but doesn't he become surprised because the inquisitor is the very man he's been talking to or in the presence of?
Yes, but I should have been more specific: Rodrigues looks almost dismayed. The lines he says before he learns this are, if I remember correctly, "You want to test my faith? Give me a real challenge. Bring me to the Inquisitor."

I've ordered the Masters of Cinema DVD of the 1970s Silence and will add the book to my reading list!

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#220 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu May 20, 2021 12:23 am

Boosmahn wrote:
Thu May 20, 2021 12:15 am
therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed May 19, 2021 10:37 pm
It's been a while since I've seen it, but doesn't he become surprised because the inquisitor is the very man he's been talking to or in the presence of?
Yes, but I should have been more specific: Rodrigues looks almost dismayed. The lines he says before he learns this are, if I remember correctly, "You want to test my faith? Give me a real challenge. Bring me to the Inquisitor."
Then that fits my reading even better! Though I’d need to see it again to properly respond with confidence

Enjoy the book! (And don’t skip past the history introductions before the first chapter- they’re worth reading and important for context)

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#221 Post by bluesforyou » Thu May 20, 2021 2:41 am

Boosmahn wrote:
Thu May 20, 2021 12:15 am
therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed May 19, 2021 10:37 pm
It's been a while since I've seen it, but doesn't he become surprised because the inquisitor is the very man he's been talking to or in the presence of?
Yes, but I should have been more specific: Rodrigues looks almost dismayed. The lines he says before he learns this are, if I remember correctly, "You want to test my faith? Give me a real challenge. Bring me to the Inquisitor."

I've ordered the Masters of Cinema DVD of the 1970s Silence and will add the book to my reading list!
I think you should rewatch that scene. "Dismayed" is exaggerating it. His expression is blank. He is surprised sure but that is normal. So far, we have been imagining a ridiculously evil villain who takes pleasure in making people suffer but it's really just some old beaurecrat who turns out to be quite smart and sensible.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#222 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu May 20, 2021 8:10 am

Perhaps that’s issuing the same effect- instead of shattering hope it shatters an othering image that holds up a mirror to Rodrigues to question his own sense of superiority in his convictions. Either way, I do think that the natural surprise (that would occur if anyone was talking about someone who was actually in the room and then informed of it) is enough to sober him away from some distant idea/hope and into the bleak present.

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