Martin Scorsese
Silence

The latest film by Martin Scorsese is based on the historical novel by the Japanese (Catholic) Shusaku Endo titled "Silenzio" ("Chimnoku") first published in 1966. The story concerns the persecutions suffered by Christians in Japan during the Tokugawa period in the first half of the 1600s. Brought to the big screen by the director with his usual mastery and with a good performance by Andrew Garfield in the lead role (but mentioning Tadanobu Asano, Yosuke Kubozuka, and Issei Ogata is also warranted), the story is rendered in a vivid reconstruction of the events and historical settings with a quality of cinematography that contributes to enhancing that sense of darkness in a film with important thought-provoking points regarding themes of a religious and spiritual nature.

The protagonist of the events is the young Jesuit Father Sebastiao Rodriguez who embarks for Japan, where he begins practicing the faith among the clandestine communities of believers along the southern coast of the country. Once discovered, he will be imprisoned, while the believers will be repeatedly forced into the "yefumi" rite or tortured in order to persuade Father Sebastiao himself to renounce the Catholic faith. The meeting with his old mentor Father Cristovao (a character that really existed and of whom historical testimonies have reached us over the centuries), who after his apostasy has adopted the Japanese lifestyle, will open a deep inner crisis in the young priest that will confront him with a great spiritual dilemma and compel him to reconsider everything he has always believed in.

The doubt posed to Father Sebastiao is universal and transcends every type of ideology or "credo," consequently involving every viewer. To what extent does systematic persecution without any flexibility depending on different disciplinary situations maintain its original sense in these tense situations without turning into a kind of personal battle, which in this specific case is described by Father Cristovao as "presumption"? The compromise, which is a compromise with oneself and in truly coming into contact with the micro-world that immediately surrounds us, does it actually betray one's ideas or could it also mean adapting to the context and seeking a new path that is truly viable? What path should be chosen between a confrontational attitude at all costs and the search for interaction and integration with what surrounds you? Naturally, while it might seem easy to pass judgments from time to time, each of us is truly in our own small way placed in front of choices where the conditions are never "free" and cut off from the surrounding world. Faced with an apparently provocative assertion, this film in a brilliant and highly intelligent manner, without saying what is right or wrong, is illuminating and a great source of inspiration.