Review of Silence (2017) by Ray S — 05 Sep 2017

Fifty years from now, this will be remembered as one of Scorsese's truly great films. It's not fashionable to make a film about devout Jesuit missionaries these days. Certainly not as fashionable as making films about sucking cocaine out of prostitutes' orifices.

This film has a soul. It has a purpose. It sets up a goalpost. It does not move them. It achieves the goal.

The first two acts are very violent and disturbing, not unlike The Passion of the Christ or The Mission, which also starred a younger Liam Neeson, Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons as Jesuit Priests in the Amazon jungles. Real portrayals of actual martyrdom occur relentlessly, multiple times, and for quite some time in Silence. And it is extremely confusing and distressing to watch. There are a few gory scenes, but the real torture comes from the mental games that the Inquisitors play in order to get the outlaw Christians to renounce their faith.

The third act has quite an impressive twist that I did not expect at all. By the end, it was truly graceful and satisfying. Scorse has said that Taxi Driver was directly influenced by Robert Bresson's Pickpocket, both tales of alienation in modern society. I haven't seen a lot of discussion about Silence, but it seems to be that the third act especially must have been influenced, at least in part, by Bresson's masterpiece Diary of a Country Priest. One of my favorite films of all time. Though I fell asleep three times trying to watch Diary, my heart soared when I finally got to see the end of it. "All is..." Well, I don't really have to tell you now, do I? All you need to know is right there in the film.