God, Where Have You Been?

Good morning Consumers! Welcome to Please Consume, the movie newsletter that has seen more movies than Warren Beatty has bedded women.

MARTY!!!

Arguably the greatest living filmmaker has a new film in theatres this week, Killers of the Flower Moon.

We are not sure how many more opportunities we are going to get to talk about this beautiful man. So let’s get into it.

Caleb, you have the floor…

Silence (2016)

Written by Caleb Madden

Martin Scorsese, as a man, is multitudinous. Just this week, the movies that we will cover show how varied Scorsese’s tastes and interests can be. One of the things I find most interesting about Scorsese’s filmography is that he often has major thematic swings from movie to movie.

Just look at the difference between Taxi Driver, one of the most violent and gruesome films at the time, and New York, New York, which is literally a musical and released only a year later! And my pick for this week is no less a swing from one side to the other.

Today we are covering Silence.

Strangers in a Foreign Land

Silence is Martin Scorsese’s follow up film to The Wolf of Wall Street, which is just about as tonally different as you can get. Silence is based on a book of the same name written by a Japanese Catholic man named Shūsaku Endō. The story of Silence follows two Jesuit Priests, Sebastião Rodrigues and Francisco Garupe (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver respectively), who make their way from Portugal to Japan to attempt to recover another priest who has been trapped in Japan. However, Japan is not interested in having anyone, especially foreign priests, enter into their country.

The story that follows is extremely harrowing as we watch the two priests struggle to survive in a place where everyone in authority wants to kill them. We see oppressed people who barely speak English come weeping to the priests asking for forgiveness and then see those same people being drowned while tied to crosses. It’s intense.

God, Where Have You Been?

The central issue that this film wrestles with is that of God’s silence. Scorsese grew up in a very Catholic environment, with a very Catholic family. This puts him in the long list of auteurs who thought heavily about being a pastor or priest before becoming a filmmaker. This background makes Scorsese interested in getting answers to higher questions.

And boy does Silence ask those questions! The central struggle of this film isn’t just the oppression or murder that happens too frequently. It is God’s silence that plagues the main character, Rodrigues. Rodrigues is told by the Japanese government that if he renounces his faith all of the torture and murder will end. But Rodrigues won’t do it because he does not hear God giving him any guidance. It is God’s silence that plagues this movie, and it is God’s silence that asks the bigger questions. Why would a good God allow this to happen? Is any of this mission good, or even right? This film really puts faith and the people who have it on trial. The torture that happens in this movie literally hinges on one man’s apparent self-righteousness.

Reflections

Hands down the best part of this movie is found in the character of Kichijiro (played by Yōsuke Kubozuka). Kichijiro is a homeless alcoholic that guides the priests into the country of Japan. He is constantly a thorn in the side of Rodrigues due to his cycle of asking for forgiveness, sinning, and then immediately asking for forgiveness again. I won’t say much more about his character because I think his arc is beautiful and I don’t want to ruin it. But my theory is that Kichijiro is where Scorsese sees himself. He is the character that really brings all these questions into focus. Kichijiro has an extremely messy faith, one that is relentlessly pulled into question. And in his faith is the thesis of the whole film: faith is messy, broken, and hopeless, but still worth having.

Writers Note: This scene contains gruesome depictions of people dying. Please be warned.

Today’s Scene