Review of Silence [the movie]

Last night hubby and I (finally) watched Silence. The movie came out in 2016 and was directed by Martin Scorsese based on the novel written by Shūsaku Endō.

Both my husband and I read the book together when we were in college and so we have been wanting to see the movie but kept putting it off knowing the emotional work and concentration that it would take to watch the film which clocks in at 2 and a half hours and covers a grisly subject.

The book and movie both follow a couple of 17th century Jesuit priests from Portugal doing missionary work in Japan. There's a bloody Japanese Inquisition going on to root out practicing Christians. So that's the very basic premise. The movie itself was filmed beautifully and handled the many, many, many torture scenes tastefully. It was, however, very difficult to watch for a couple of reasons.

The first being the Silence which was the point. The priests are dismayed by the silence of God as they pray to him to alleviate the suffering of the Japanese Christian converts who lead not only difficult lives, but who are also being systematically persecuted. There's no grand score to this movie. There's no background music. At all. The movie opens with blackness and the sound of silence and that silence is carried throughout the movie. There are many scenes of just silence and even though many of those scenes are visually gripping or are dramatic in some way, it becomes a sort of act of faith to keep watching the movie that demands so much of the viewer. So the Silence and the trial of watching is a point. And it's well taken with this viewer, but I can certainly see how this factor contributed in this movie's relative poor performance among the typical audience. It has a 69% rating for general audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.

The other reason the movie was difficult to watch has to do with the extremely violent nature of many scenes. The movie deals primarily with the process of torturing the priests and Christian converts by the Inquisitor and his men. Some of the torture scenes include crucifixion, drowning, bleeding, forced work and many end in the deaths of the victims. That subject matter, understandably, is a huge turn off for many audiences particularly when we are so used to seeing violence portrayed in an entertaining light. Take most action movies, as an example. Violence portrayed more realistically that focuses on the suffering of the victims is much more difficult to consume.

All in all, my husband and I both ...I wouldn't say... enjoyed the film, but certainly appreciated it's emotional impact.

That's my humble, and brief, and limited review of the film. I hope it could be helpful to anyone deciding whether they want to watch the movie ...or even read the book.