Review of Silence (2017) by James R — 17 Jan 2017

I was a bit mixed on Silence. It's extremely well shot and well acted, but I came away from it with a lot of questions. The film is about two Portuguese priests named Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garupe (Adam Driver) who journey to Japan to search for their missing mentor and teacher Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson).

There is rumors that Father Ferreira denounced his faith and is living in Japan peacefully. Rodrigues and Garupe won't take this as an absolute answer and thus begins their journey. In Japan they find people that are hiding their Christian faith, but are being hunted down by the government.

The film brings up a lot of questions about faith and if its proper for people to bring their faith into another society. The questions of is it right and by what right do they have to do this? Rodrigues questions his faith throughout some events of the film and its hard to get a pinpoint on if he's right or not.

The Japanese do not wan't Christianity in their lands going as far as torturing and killing Christians to get the point across. The movie brings up many philosophies about how one can always stay true to their own beliefs without showing or talking about it.

My gripe with the film is a couple of things actually. The movie is a bit too long. It clocks in at 2 hours and 41 minutes and I feel like if it was 20 minutes shorter it could have benefited from it.

The first half of the film is a bit slow and doesn't really nail what it's going for and almost feels like the plot is wandering a bit. The film also suffers from a bit of a rushed ending. It's told almost in an epilogue fashion and I didn't feel like it did the plot the justice it deserved.

Overall, it's still a Scorsese film and like many reviewers have said its worth a watch in the theaters. It's a film you want to pay attention to and while it wasn't my favorite film (and probably wouldn't watch again) it's worth a watch for the experience alone and to come up with your own opinion on it.