The always-controversial Mel Gibson released his spiritual “passion” project, The Passion of the Christ on Ash Wednesday of 2004. Gibson’s movie, although artfully crafted and containing a beautiful performance by Jim Caviezel, does nothing more than beat its audience over the head with a bloodied image of Christ who is more God than man. Gibson’s God is the Aquinian philosopher’s God. St. Thomas Aquinas writes in his Summa Theologica that in order for God to be God and not a finite being, He must be “omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.” That is, God must be all-powerful, in all places at all times, all knowing, and all good. When Jim Caviezel’s Jesus is being beaten by Roman soldiers with wooden rods and a cat o’ nine tails, he defiantly stands up at the whipping post as if to say, “Is that all you got?” This is not the Christian articulation of God, in the literal sense, and, this is most certainly not Martin Scorsese’s articulation of God.
Scorsese, who before filmmaking attempted to enter the Roman Catholic priesthood, infuses almost all of his films with his belief in the Christian God and His absence. While Mel Gibson makes his passion project about the sort-of-superhuman Jesus, Scorsese gives us films like The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988 and, almost thirty years later, Silence, based on the novel by Shusaku Endo. The overarching questions that these films ask is, “Who and where is God in relationship to humanity?” Silence answers these questions, but, in a way that is much more difficult to confront than Gibson’s Passion. Silence is one of the most beautifully made films of the year and certainly the greatest religious film I have seen since Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, Axel’s Babette’s Feast, and Malick’s The Tree of Life.
Andrew Garfield is Father Rodrigues and Adam Driver is Father Garupe. They are two Portuguese Roman Catholic priests of the Jesuit order who set out for 17th Century Japan in order to find and recover their lost mentor priest, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson). They are sent out by a cautious head priest, Father Valignano (Ciaran Hinds), who Rodrigues writes letters to along their perilous journey. Ferreira and Valignano are the senior foils of Rodrigues and Garupe. I remember when I entered seminary. I was filled with passion for God’s Church and the world and there was nothing I couldn’t do! I was gonna fix up the world and feed the hungry! In the opening scenes of Silence, the young and determined Fr. Garupe and Fr. Rodrigues, looking fresh out of the seminary, sit across from the wise, composed, stony-faced Fr. Valignano. Fr. Valignano tells them that he has received word that Fr. Ferreira has apostatized — renounced the faith — and is now living as a rich, married, comfortable “Japanese.” This was, of course, the time when Christianity had been outlawed in Buddhist Japan. The young priests insist upon traveling to Japan and finding Fr. Ferreira because “their work is not yet finished.”
Full of passion and ambition, we travel along with Fr. Rodrigues and Fr. Garupe as they hide out in, first, a cold, damp cave and then a cold, damp coal shack on a verdant mountainside. I was reminded of Terrence Malick’s deeply spiritual films The Thin Red Line and The New World as I watched the camera pan over stunning scenes of foggy, rolling hills, wide open star-lit night skies, and breath-taking bodies of water. It is no accident that Scorsese sets the scenes of unbearable torture and crucifixion of Japanese Christians against the backdrop of phenomenal beauty. As my systematic theology prof used to say, “God still loves beauty.” Driver plays Fr. Garupe as the young clergyman who is dedicated to the dogma of Rome over and above feelings. The Japanese soldiers place an image of the Christ in the mud and require those accused of being Christians to step on the image and deny Christianity. Garupe tells the Japanese Christians in hiding that they must “have courage” in the face of temptation and go to their deaths. Fr. Rodrigues is the young clergyman who is so overwhelmed by his love of the people he meets that he tells them with tears in his eyes to “trample” on the image if it will save their lives. There is no question that the two priests love each other very much, but, their hearts are bound in different ways. I know these two types very well.
Scorsese’s most obvious character in the film is God. It is impossible to walk away from this film and his other films, even The Departed and Taxi Driver, without wrestling with the question, “What does Scorsese say about God?” In fact, all of Scorsese’s work seems to be one long commentary on God and humanity. Make no mistake, Scorsese is making a statement. Scorsese, a Catholic theist, projects God as a God of weakness. This God is revealed in the suffering of His beloved children. Scorsese gives his viewers the best examples of Christian theology that we have in the movies.
The God that Endo writes about in his novel is a God who intentionally chooses weakness over power and suffers alongside the poor. This model fits Scorsese’s Christology perfectly. Scorsese’s God is a complex, problematic, scandalous God who appears silent in the face of evil, but, has been there all along, suffering. Silence challenges the triumphalistic Christianity of the West because it insists that, unlike the dread of Fr. Rodrigues, it is not that God is absent when all we feel is silence from Him. It is that He is busy being tortured, burned, and drowned with His children. Scorsese and Silence challenge the Christian by asking them to take the Jesus of the Christian Scriptures seriously. The conclusion of the film reveals that, if they do, their view of God might change entirely.
So, were Garupe and Rodrigues wrong about God and the propagation of Christianity in Japan all along? [Spoiler Alert] One of the finest scenes in the film happens toward the end when Rodrigues finally meets face-to-face with Ferreira, who has seemingly denounced the Christian faith and is now living as a clean cut and married Japanese citizen and student in the Buddhist temple. Ferreira explains to Rodrigues, quite wisely, that Christianity simply cannot take root in Japan, Buddhism being a non-theistic practice. Rodrigues is crushed by Ferreira’s conversion and blames a “spirit of darkness” for Ferreira’s explanation. Ferreira is even compassionate and tender toward Rodrigues as he warmly invites him to save lives and denounce the faith. He is inspired by all of the “knowledge” Japan has to offer. It is clear that Ferreira has become a man of reason, which is hard for a postmodern twenty something westerner to argue with or dislike. Fr. Rodrigues lashes out in tears against Ferreira and shuts him out, unwilling to engage in constructive dialogue following all of the violence and death he has witnessed at the hands of the Japanese. We watch as the agonized and helpless Rodrigues realizes that the Church he has had so much faith in has failed him.
At a crucial moment in the film, God finally speaks to Fr. Rodrigues in the voice of Ciaran Hinds. God says, “I’ve been with you all along, suffering beside you.” As Rodrigues weeps in the dirt, Ferreira stands behind him, his hands on his shoulders, consoling him.
Silence is a film that American Christians will watch and feel validation for their “persecution” at the hands of progressives. Silence, despite its graphic subject matter, is a subtle film. Scorsese is inviting us to really experience his new film and really hear what its story has to say about the Christian God, if we have “ears to hear.” Unfortunately, it will be easy for many to miss the point and to dismiss Fr. Ferreira as one who has lost his faith and given in to evil. As a Buddhist practitioner with Christian roots I find the wrestling between Ferreira and Rodrigues to be fascinating. I walked away from the film feeling, without a doubt, that Rodrigues and Garupe had been both right and wrong about God. It is not the propagation of Christianity and the all-powerful, all good God that matters, ultimately. It is the compassion we share in the midst of suffering. If there is a God, according to Scorsese, then that is where God is found, and nowhere else. Martin Scorsese’s Silence is a great film and not just because it is so beautifully photographed, written, and acted, but because it offers a unique challenge to the core philosophies of the triumphalistic Christian west and asks us all, in humility, to admit that we don’t have all of the answers.
Joey Armstrong is a hospital chaplain from Western New York. He is also a playwright and amateur cartoonist. Follow him on Twitter @chaplainmystic and Medium, where he writes more reviews for film and television.
Leave a Reply