CREEDE HINSHAW: Film portrays clash of Christian, ancient cultures

Earlier this week I watched Martin Scorsese’s 2017 movie “Silence” on Amazon Prime. This offering from one of the great directors of modern cinema is a natural fit for the somber season of Lent. Based on a 1966 novel of the same title by Japanese author Shusako Endo (1923-1996), “Silence” recounts the painful story of two Portuguese Jesuit missionaries who travel to Japan in the 1600s to locate a fellow Jesuit priest rumored to have abandoned the faith and converted to Buddhism.

Endo’s novel, which I read a few years ago, is a somber, thought-provoking take on the collision of a passionate Christianity with the deeply held values and faith system of an equally passionate ancient culture. The novel avoids the easy triumphalism and bravado that unrealistically portrays some Christian books and movies.

I came away from the novel (which I highly recommend) challenged to think deeply. The author, a famous, award-winning Japanese Roman Catholic novelist in a nation where only 1 percent of the people are Christian, skillfully raised issues that most of us rarely consider: turning one’s back on one’s faith (apostasy), diluting the faith once delivered to the saints by grafting or adapting pagan practices to that faith (syncretism), respectfully listening to and finding Christ while trying to convert the other person and holding fast to one’s faith in the face of torture and death.

These themes are not easily explored in a novel or a movie, and I was eager to see how Scorsese would pull off this difficult task. For the most part, he succeeded admirably. Although the movie doesn’t remain completely faithful to the novel, the major themes of how to maintain fidelity to Christ and church in the face of torture and adamant refusal to convert is told well.

The violence inflicted on the Japanese Christian converts makes one squirm, but the scenes never felt gratuitous. There are also a few scenes where, via debate and conversation, Scorsese tries admirably to explain the difference between the two cultures without denigrating either. Such scenes are the most challenging in any movie; most moviegoers prefer action to dialogue and thought. But Scorsese largely succeeds on this point, too.

Rotten Tomatoes, the movie rating website, has the movie critics giving the movie an 84 percent rating “that stands among Scorsese’s finest works,” but movie audiences only rated it at 69 percent. My guess is that the viewing public wanted: (1) more of a Mel Gibson or locally produced Sherwood Pictures type story where good vs. evil is clearly proclaimed and the Christian triumph in the end is a clear-cut victory, and (2) preferred a movie shorter than 161 minutes.

In this season of Lent when we focus on what it means to walk toward the cross, to carry one’s cross and even to die for one’s faith, the movie will start deep discussion, maybe even prayer. Although this is not a “Christian film,” those who follow Christ in this movie are portrayed realistically and without the anti-faith bias that surfaces in so many Hollywood films.

Contact Creede Hinshaw at [email protected].