Review of Silence (2016) by Fadeblack — 03 Feb 2017

Sounds like hyperbole given the great competition on both accounts, but yeah. This is it. Even with all due respect to Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, which was always going to be very hard to top...but this one is it.

Pretty much the most profound movie on any topic I have ever seen. Leaves you shacked to the very core of your soul. Possibly depressed and questioning your own faith. Possibly more inspired than ever before. Likely a mixture of both, even if that's a contradictory statement.

Spoilers below, so obviously don't read if you haven't watched.

But my interpretation of the ending goes back to my favorite Bible verse.

Romans 8:38-39 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.….

Because even though in many ways Rodrigues appeared defeated at the end - he was forced to deny Christ, he was stripped of his entire Christian identity, he was made to work against the spread of the faith, he was given a Buddhist name, family, burial etc - and more importantly, even if internally he might have lost all semblance of faith, or at the very least was left tormented and conflicted, though might have appeared peaceful on the outside - even if his body, mind, and entire being were metamorphosed, even though he heard nothing but silence from God --- none of that, and nothing else in existence, separated him from the love of Christ.

The ending could have worked perfectly well even without the cross in his palm - but I felt it was a symbolical gesture of the above.

10/10 if there ever was one.