Silence

"… I always wanted to make a film about a modern-day saint, so to speak. I was aiming in the direction of Last Temptation of Christ, but when that was finished, along with all the controversy and discussion, I needed more. I don’t know, I just needed more...To have faith is such an extraordinary gift...But it took me years to understand that doubt is part of that faith... “[These men] give up truth to ultimately achieve the real truth of Christianity, which is a stripping away of the self, and emptying the self, and not having anything left to be proud of. Now that fascinated me – I said, how can you do that? How do you go there? You can go to mass, you can go to any kind of religious service, you could suddenly speak in tongues, but how do you go to that place?..in Asia, colonialism is linked constantly with the missionary. That’s a wound that still has yet to heal. So in terms of Christianity applying to the other, as Endo pointed out, first of all you have to begin to know the other culture. How do you do that? You meet the people, you learn something of the language, but you learn about the way they live, the way they think. You know, when [Ferreira] says – in Endo’s words – that the Japanese cannot conceive of anything that transcends the human, it’s very interesting. Now how do you do Christianity there, you know? There might be a way. Maybe the way to do it is by action – in other words, you go to a place, you do what you do, and eventually someone says, I’d like to be like that person was, in my life.”

~ Martin Scorsese

"...I believe that to strip faith of its “social and historical encrustations,” and to excavate its deeper and almost blind foundation in hope and love, is precisely what Endō was trying to communicate. Scorsese’s film powerfully succeeds at the same. However, I deeply fear that many will miss this, because it is done with such subtlety, character development, and simple brilliance...

This is why the profound nature of faith, hope, and love is not fully subject to rational analysis, and also why they overlap and fulfill one another. This was obvious in both the book and the film, at least for me. Each virtue must contain the other two to be fully a virtue! Simply stated: faith cannot be understood or lived without hope and love, hope cannot be understood or lived without love and faith, and love cannot be understood or lived without faith and hope. You might need to read that several times because your mind should be spinning, just as it spins while watching scene after scene in Silence.

So as not to steal the thunder—and it is indeed thunder—from your experience of the film, know that Shūsaku Endō (1923-1996), a Japanese Catholic, was a master of moral ambiguity, similar to Graham Greene (1994-1991) in the West. They both represent the best of Catholic moral imagination, as does Scorsese in this film that took him nearly thirty years to make. I personally would consider it the most effective religious film I have ever seen.

Although there are many wonderful sub-characters and plots, Fr. Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) is led, step by step, to give up his own heroics, and desire for martyrdom, in order to free other human beings from their suffering. I could almost hear him offering Meister Eckhart’s prayer, “I pray God to rid me of God!” And Kichijiro (Yôsuke Kubozuka), a crypto Japanese Christian and Judas-like figure, might end up being the most sincere and utterly tried Christian of all, who chases after forgiveness the entire time.

Set in 17th-century Japan, Silence has the power to jolt and shock you into the paradox of a living and suffering faith until it morphs into love and the deepest kind of human hope. The final scene will take your breath away—and give you breath—while convincing you of nothing! It no longer needs to."

~ Fr. Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation