Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

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chetienne
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#126 Post by chetienne » Fri Dec 23, 2016 4:52 pm

About to see the film tonight, but having just read the Yamato piece, I wanted to chime in. On the whole, she articulates her argument with clarity and consistency, even if it's a kind of argument I don't generally find useful when applied to a work of art, but this moment...

"A nonbeliever, on the other hand, might find Scorsese’s dogmatic obsession so taxing that it seems perfectly reasonable when the Japanese take strategic measures to expel these interlopers from their country—yes, sure, even if it means hanging innocents by the feet until the torture drives them mad or worse. If you suffer from the affliction of not caring about the soul of Silence’s hero, you too might find yourself dreadfully uninterested in the crisis he’s brought upon himself, wishing he’d just go home to Portugal and leave Japan alone."

...strikes me as fairly extraordinary, as well as revealing of her own prejudices, prejudices she admittedly doesn't shy away from or attempt to apologize for, rather wears with a badge of honor, because she sees herself as speaking out against the unreconstructed moral delusions of the film and its maker. Now to be fair, she does ground her objections here in terms of personal response ("might find... taxing", "might find yourself dreadfully uninterested"), but given that she later evinces an awareness of the oppressive social forces that helped drive so many Japanese to accept the Christian faith in the first place, and critiques the film for ignoring same, it's kind of stunning that she would give herself and any sympathetic readers permission to ignore them here, because, gosh, it's so "taxing" to sympathize with this white guy's moral dilemma.

For myself, I've always found the idea that it is problematic, let alone "inherently" so, to interrogate the agonies and contradictions of a given worldview from within its own moral space pretty odd. What is THE SEARCHERS doing after all, when it comes to the racism of Ethan Edwards? THE SEARCHERS is both a milestone and sort of a failure, and that is part of what makes it so continually rewarding. You can feel Ford brushing with feelings and ideas that it is difficult for him to accept in any other form than that of a work of art. In that film, and in most of his work for that matter, he is literally pushing past the bounds of what he himself was willing and able to acknowledge to others, except in the most private of moments. I have no idea if SILENCE reaches this level, but however successful it is I don't think the perspective Yamato is bringing to bear here is very fruitful, sympathetic as I am to the impulse behind it.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#127 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Dec 23, 2016 8:31 pm

What bothers me is that she _appears_ to suggest she has familiarity with the book, but then goes on to show that she, in fact, has nary a clue as to what goes on in the book.

At least with Shinoda's film version, I was indeed able to sympathize (in part) with the (Japanese-style) "grand inquisitor". One got a sense as to how and why the protagonist's notions could reasonably be seen as dangerous. I'll be interested to see whether I get the same feeling from Scorsese's version.

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FrauBlucher
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#128 Post by FrauBlucher » Fri Dec 23, 2016 9:19 pm

I read the book a number of years ago, and without going back to reread, I don't recall any socioeconomic passages that suggest why Catholicism took hold, as Yamato wanted Scorsese to show. I saw it and felt it stays pretty faithful to the book.

chetienne
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#129 Post by chetienne » Sat Dec 24, 2016 1:27 am

Michael, I wondered whether she is as familiar with the book as she claims myself. Without having read it, it just struck me that she seems to avoid discussing it against the film in any detail, preferring to generalize.

Having just seen the movie, I gotta say the idea that anyone could come away from it with the impression that Scorsese has little to no interest in the suffering of the non-white characters in the film, beyond their bearing on the protagonist's crisis of faith, is kind of laughable. Yes, the film grounds itself in the subjective experiences of the Jesuit fathers, particularly Garrpe, and, yes, his crisis of faith is in a sense the primary subject of the film, but it's not as if that crisis occurs on an abstract level. The fact is there would be no crisis were it not for the very real, physical and social terrors he witnesses inflicted upon people he has ostensibly come to save.

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Professor Wagstaff
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#130 Post by Professor Wagstaff » Sat Dec 24, 2016 1:51 am

Everything I've read by Yamato in the past is driven by agenda and I have trouble taking her seriously. She came off very poorly last winter when she confronted the Coen Brothers for the lack of diverse casting in Hail Caesar.

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dda1996a
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#131 Post by dda1996a » Sat Dec 24, 2016 3:23 am

I hate those arguments, and I whole-heartedly agree with the Coens. The problem with diversity is getting more films about minorities being made, a lot less about not nominating only whites (which is a problem, but when there are barely any films about minorities, how will you nominate them?).
But the worst are thinkpieces like these. Hail, Caesar! is set in 1950s Hollywood, and Silence obviously doesn't ignore its Japanese suffering. The difference between a film like that and something like The Help, which tries to show how some whites helped blacks is different from focusing on the religious and personal journey of a white hero through Japan.
It's like she tries to find discrimination and prejudices in every "white" film.

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colinr0380
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#132 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Dec 24, 2016 6:26 am

It does sometimes feel that those kind of think pieces are written more for the sake of the author (and the 'cultural moment' that they are in) than the film. At the very least they run the risk of confusing 'representation' with 'intention'. (After all you can have a 'representative' film that ticks all of the right boxes but still doesn't properly address an issue on any more than a superficial level)

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dda1996a
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#133 Post by dda1996a » Sat Dec 24, 2016 11:49 am

Besides being egregious it also feels completely oblivious to how the industry works many times. Did she expect Scorsese to completely disregard the famous actors who made the film come together? I think stuff like The Help should get flak for being insensitive. Its like she expects every film to cast a major character with a minority. It just feels forced. Make more minority centric films, don't try to push something just so it can pass a "test".

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#134 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Dec 24, 2016 2:00 pm

Interesting -- here's (basically) an anti-Hillary hit piece (masquerading as a movie review) written by Yamato for the right-wing site RealClearPolitics: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... o-see.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; .

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FrauBlucher
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#135 Post by FrauBlucher » Sat Dec 24, 2016 2:33 pm

Her views are definitely not right-wing. Check her twitter page.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#136 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Dec 24, 2016 3:23 pm

FrauBlucher wrote:Her views are definitely not right-wing. Check her twitter page.
But she was willing to spread (untruthful) Hillary hate. Not MY kind of "liberal" or "leftist". :-(

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colinr0380
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#137 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Dec 24, 2016 4:17 pm

I'd not realised until this moment that Shinya Tsukamoto is in Silence in an acting role! Though that also leads me to wonder whether we've heard anything about his 2014 remake of Fires on the Plain getting a UK or US release?

EDIT: Ah, rockysds has found that Third Window will be releasing it in 2017.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sun Dec 25, 2016 6:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Big Ben
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#138 Post by Big Ben » Sat Dec 24, 2016 5:13 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:
FrauBlucher wrote:Her views are definitely not right-wing. Check her twitter page.
But she was willing to spread (untruthful) Hillary hate. Not MY kind of "liberal" or "leftist". :-(
Likely an angry Bernie supporter. Plenty of those still around.

But as for the film her piece read, to me, like someone more interested in personal projection and just looking for flaws than keeping an open mind. That's okay for some but I must confess to being really against this type of criticism.

See also: Her criticism of Hail Ceaser! piece above.

For those who have read the novel is it an easy read? I've got a few books in my backlog (Mostly heavy science related) that I need to finish and was wondering if Endo's novel was a breeze to get through?

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jwd5275
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#139 Post by jwd5275 » Sat Dec 24, 2016 5:35 pm

Endo's novel is relatively short and I remember it to be a quick read.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#140 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Dec 24, 2016 11:56 pm

jwd5275 wrote:Endo's novel is relatively short and I remember it to be a quick read.
Quick, perhaps -- but "easy" -- not for me. (But worthwhile).
Big Ben wrote:Likely an angry Bernie supporter. Plenty of those still around.
Of course, Sanders himself had no sympathy for this sort of dumbass attitude.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#141 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Dec 26, 2016 3:26 am

Saw this today. First off, it was preceded by some terrible looking trailers, including three in a row that featured lousy covers of classic alternative rock songs. One trailer was Life, and the storyline of dangerous alien life playing out under soundbites from a John F. Kennedy speech lead a friend to remark on how it was tapping into the anti-immigration paranoia fueling Trump's reactionary America. I bring this up because much to my surprise, so much of the film kept me thinking about the state of the world and the terrible prospects of the near future.

I'm not sure if this is a masterpiece but it raises many questions about the world in a very profound and relentlessly self-interrogating way. Perhaps it's more of a credit to the source material, but as an agnostic I found all of this extremely compelling. It took a while - for the first thirty minutes, I wondered if this would be a film for believers only. The Catholic rituals may have been familiar, but for the first act, watching them in the story's context made Christianity seem like a cult.

That impression faded when I focused less on the particulars of the religion and more on the different point-of-views of the Japanese government and the Christians, and from there it was a flood of questions. It's hard to summarize because there was so much that seemed relevant to what was going on here.

For example, I kept thinking about the conflict of morality defined by the secular, legal world and those by one's personal religion. The real struggles within that issue have been distorted and twisted by the hostile political environment we've been in, but while the separation of church and state is a non-issue for me, I don't doubt that the personal, internal struggle it can create can be very real.

This line of thought lead to the imperialistic tendencies of religion throughout history - it's not explicitly stated in the film, but there is dialogue that made me think of Christianity's own history of oppressing other religions with equal (if not worse) brutality and its own inquisitions. The utopian model of allowing multiple philosophical views has always been the only choice for me, but over the past 15 years, I've only had doubts about whether a safe and unshaken majority of the world would truly embrace that.

Beyond that, I couldn't help but equate the Japanese government with the ruling Chinese Communist party of today, and the way they can view religious faith as a state threat. On the one hand, I'm deeply concerned about the influence reactionary religious views will have on our country, and yet I can see how a deep belief in something greater than "the State" can be seen as an eventual path to political freedom under authoritarian rule.

A lot to chew on, and because of the way this film dramatized these philosophical arguments, there wasn't a moment during the last two hours where I wasn't mulling these issues over. That was very unexpected given the reactions I've heard from others towards this film.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#142 Post by hearthesilence » Tue Dec 27, 2016 4:11 pm

Given the muted reception this has gotten, I'm glad to see one critic who was also quite taken with this film (even moreso).
Glenn Kenny wrote:I wonder if they might have had an easier time getting this made had they offered the pitch “It’s Bridge on the River Kwai, only with priests.” But seriously: one of the most moving and thoughtful American pictures of the last fifty years. The only reason the Zulawski is [ranked above it on this list] is in honor of that director’s swan song and stuff.

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#143 Post by Jean-Luc Garbo » Tue Jan 03, 2017 5:30 pm

An excellent interview with Scorsese at Film Comment. His discussion of some of the film's mise-en-scene has me especially excited to see it. Does anyone know anymore about the legal background he mentions regarding the film getting back into production?

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Cold Bishop
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#144 Post by Cold Bishop » Tue Jan 03, 2017 8:59 pm

I assume you meant this link.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#145 Post by hearthesilence » Tue Jan 03, 2017 9:40 pm

Jean-Luc Garbo wrote:An excellent interview with Scorsese at Film Comment. His discussion of some of the film's mise-en-scene has me especially excited to see it. Does anyone know anymore about the legal background he mentions regarding the film getting back into production?
I think there were several things going on. I only know of one problem - Scorsese was sued by a company that said they promised to finance the film if he would make it his "next" film but claimed Scorsese kept delaying things by making another film instead (this would've been during the '00s). I think they said money had already been exchanged, hence the lawsuit.

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#146 Post by FrauBlucher » Wed Jan 04, 2017 6:52 am

Hearthesilence is correct about the legal issues. You can probably find more detailed articles but this is a brief summary.

BTW... During a Q&A session after a screening of either Shuttler Island or Hugo (memory escapes me on this) I asked him about the progress of Silence (Daniel Day Lewis was still attached to Silence at the time), he stammered a little, and said "can't talk about it."
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#147 Post by captveg » Thu Jan 05, 2017 3:34 am

Perhaps only Dreyer's Ordet touches upon the contemplation of faith in film to the degree of this masterwork. Those that profess Christianity have found strange comfort and pride in persecution, but for who's sake? And would they allow the ridicule of other Christians to shower upon them if it was truly the most Christian of paths to give every outward appearance of apostasy? If you don't care to weigh such ideas then this is not a film to dive into; otherwise, immerse yourself. 10/10

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#148 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Jan 07, 2017 9:05 am

I just learnt a couple of interesting things from Scorsese's interview on Silence in the latest issue of Sight & Sound. Apparently amongst the cast Asuka Kurosawa (the star of Shinya Tsukamoto's A Snake of June (NSFW)) is going to be in a small but important role. And Katsuo Nakamura (probably best known for playing Hoichi in the Hoichi The Earless segment of the 1964 Kwaidan) is going to be in there too!

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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#149 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Jan 09, 2017 12:49 pm

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.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

#150 Post by hearthesilence » Mon Jan 09, 2017 1:22 pm

mfunk9786 wrote: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 would disagree with this. I came away thinking the film was very aware of that history, and instead of taking a didactic route, to me the idea was loaded in much of the self-interrogation. I believe one of the Japanese translators even addresses the idea a bit more directly when discussing how the Christians were seeking to replace the country's Buddhist culture.

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