Two young Jesuit priests travel to 17th-century Japan, where Christianity has been outlawed. The priests wish to verify whether their mentor has apostatized, but end up facing their own crises of faith. Silence is a huge disappointment, mainly because the main premise, a young priest having a theological crisis in the horror of Godless Japan, does not transfer well to screen. It may well be riveting in the original novel, but the interior world of Garfield does not sufficiently become exterior. This despite ample narration from the protagonist himself, and the bizarre introduction in the last 20 minutes or so of an as yet unseen character, a European merchant whose heavy-handed exposition is, I suspect, intended to close the narrative in a way the images and momentum to this point have failed to do. Garfield performs well, Liam Neeson is reduced to a cameo, and Tadanobu Asano is similarly under-used. An implicit critique of Christian missionary in foreign lands is under-developed. What the Japanese made of these interlopers would be worth exploring, but the film shows little interest in the Japanese point of view. For the first time ever, I was bored by a Scorsese film. Silence is dull, and lacks vision.
Review of Silence
