Friday, December 23, 2016

Silence











Silence’s Cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto delivers one of the most beautiful photographed films you could want and Thelma Schoonmaker cuts the images together in her usual superb fashion.
The question is why Writer/Director Martin Scorsese would want to make this hideous story of inhumanity?  There doesn’t seem to be much point beyond making an audience sit for 2 hours and 41 minutes of torture and mutilations of Japanese Christians and Portuguese priests (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) by a Buddhist Inquisitor (Issei Ogata) in the mid-1600s.   

In truth, the religious fervor of both sides is warped with the Japanese Christians' misunderstanding the teachings of the priests, the priests’ misunderstanding of God’s relationship to humankind and the Buddhists' misunderstanding of outsiders and the  tenets of their own faith.

 The Inquisitor described Japan as a swamp where nothing grows.  This wasn't a 4DX screening, but I felt I was sitting in a swamp.
 
To open a film like this in the Holiday Season was a big mistake.  It would have been better at Halloween. 

For the technical and acting aspects, I give Silence a 4.2 out of 5, but for story and script, I give it a 2.8 out of 5, so a 3.5 overall.

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