Review of Silence (2017) by Charles M — 29 Jul 2017

This movie is an enigma to me. I read someone else's review describing it as somewhere between mind numbing and masterful, and I think I would agree. Scorsese has a way with the camera that can reveal passion and tension in the most pedestrian scene. At the same time, this movie failed to move, or to reveal the purpose of its characters.

Having said that, I still don't know how I feel about the movie because every character in it and their motivations is completely foreign (as in aliens from outer space) to me. Why, as a medieval Japanese person, you would be interested in converting to a religion that brought so much risk to yourself and your family? Why as a catholic priest would you insist on going to a country knowing that what you are proposing is going to put you and others at risk?

For all the horrors that the priests suffered in that country (and obviously one can only feel compassion for each individual who was tortured at the hands of cruel captors), it seems to be a bit of karma for what the Church had done in the Americas.