Martin Scorsese, world renowned Italo-American film-director and producer, who directed landmark films such as Taxi Driver, Raging bull, the Last Temptation of Christ, Hugo Cabret, had been planning to bring to the big screen the novel written by Japanese writer Shūsaku Endō, Silence, that retraces the tragedy of the Jesuit priests and Christians faithful tortured in Japan in the 17th Century, since 1988.
Historical facts. The story takes place in 1643, when two young European Jesuit priests, Sebastian Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver), covertly arrive in Japan to find their confrere, Father Christovao Ferreira (Liam Neeson), and to carry out their evangelizing mission following the example of Francis Xavier. It’s the Edo Period, marked by fierce persecutions against Christian civilians and priests; villages were searched and their inhabitants were harshly tortured and put to death on the cross. The two missionaries decide to face the danger as the night sets in with the support of local faithful, who incessantly sought the comfort of the Word. The story reaches a turning point when the protagonist, Fr Sebastian, is kidnapped and imprisoned. He is given the option to abjure his faith, intimidated via psychological and physical pressure, forced to witness the faithful being tortured.
From “fall” to mercy.
Silence reconfirms Martin Scorsese as a great screenwriter, capable of mastering different movie genres and complex themes with expressive vigour and stylistic skill. Silence is a thorny story of suffering, the testimony of faith -witnesses killed for refusing to renounce Christ. It is also the story of “fallen” priests who left the faith – the so-called Lapsi – the name given to apostates persecuted by the Roman authorities -, unable to endure the burden of violence, barbarism and intimidation.
The protagonist is interpreted in an intense and convincing way by US actor Andrew Garfield, who skilfully steps into the character of Fr Sebastian expressing the strength and the enthusiasm of his faith along with his human fragility in the face of anguish; a narration of his interior torment, swinging between suffering and quest for the voice of God. The voice of God is silence; and it is disseminated in silence. In prison Sebastian prays, he clings to the Cross to escape cruelty. Forced and beaten to the brink of abjuration, the Jesuit priest never ceases asking for a sign, a word of comfort from God. A voice seems to reverberate in the silence, at the precise moment of the “fall.” Was it the merciful embrace of God before the cry of a son, as happened to the Son who died on the Cross? Father Sebastian slides into apostasy, he accepts to save the tortured faithful and his life, moving away from the Cross, as father Christovao Ferreira – who existed in real life – had done before him. Ferreira committed apostasy, married a Japanese woman and embraced the Buddhist faith.
Film director Martin Scorsese delicately enters the folds of the story, focusing on the events, and especially on the interior torment of the protagonist, struggling between adhesion to the faith and renouncing it – thereby denying his identity. On the screen, Scorsese invites us to look beyond the façade, to dig deeper than fleeting impressions. The movie camera delves into the soul of a man: a man of faith.
From the Vatican Film library to Italian movie theatres. The preview of the movie was screened at the Vatican Film Library on November 30 2016, to the presence of the Prefect of the Secretary for Communications Msgr. Dario Edoardo Viganò, who accompanied Martin Scorsese in audience with the Pope. Silence will be released in Italian movie theatres on January 12 2017, with a view to Academy Awards. From the pastoral angle, the Italian Bishops’ Conference’s Commission for Film Evaluation (www.cnvf.it) described it as a complex, problematic production, appropriate for debates, to recover the history of missionaries in the far East, and to reflect on the persecution of Christians today.
(*) CEI Film Evaluation Commission
