I have been interested in seeing Silence for a long time but had never found a person willing to go see it with me. So with a storm on the way I thought that it might make sense to buy this off Amazon. I just finished it and so here are some thoughts.

This was a surprisingly meaty movie. I had never read the source material, which is a book by Shūsaku Endō. I am not sure how much they changed for it - in fact all that I knew was that the movie had been 20 years in the making and it was Martin Scorsese’s dream to make it.

The movie talks about the Japanese persecution of Christians during the 1600s. Two priests played by Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver hear that their mentor have apostatized against God. They go to Japan to find out more and to bring him back if possible. While there, they meet two villages full of secret Christians. But eventually the men are captured.

The movie depicts a practice where Christians are taken to a stone carving of Christ. They are commanded to step on it, thus apostatizing against God. if not, then they are tortured and possibly killed. Some can do it with ease - one guy does it multiple times. But others are not. Andrew Garfield’s character seems to be the priest more flexible and open to this act so that it would save lives. Adam Driver is more against this. When someone asks him if he should do this, Andrew says to trample but Adam just says “have courage”.

They eventually find Liam Neeson’s character - who is the teacher who apostatized. They sit down and have a brief but rich discussion about God and religion. The rumors are not just true, Liam’s character is full on unreluctant about his reversal. Liam claims that the seed of Christianity cannot grow in Japan, because the land is a swamp. Andrew’s character retorts that it is because the seedling was torn out before it could grow. Liam replies that what they were worshipping was not Christianity at all. It was their understanding of the Gospel - their own distortion.

That phrase struck me quite hard. I remember a Muslim friend of mine saying something about Catholicism - don’t remember what - and I mentioned that the Church was growing quite quickly in South America. He snorted and said that what they were worshipping there was not Catholicism. It was simply their native ancestor and idol worship with a nominal Christian veneer thrown over it. The Virgin Mary swapped with whatever they did before.

I thought a lot about it since then and I think this was the first movie that really touched on that nerve and thought. Is this really our religion if we just swap out what we worship with something else? I feel like the movie brings it up briefly but never retorts it. I wish they at least tried.

This is a great movie and despite the 2 hour, 40 min runtime I was engrossed. This was a stunner. Go see it.