Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Page 60<br />
Rodrigo Pietro’s photography here is above reproach, and the score by<br />
Kathryn Kluge and Kim Allen Kluge never once pushes the viewer towards an<br />
unearned emotional catharsis. As usual, Thelma Schoonmaker’s editorial hand can be<br />
felt in the restraint, the direct emotional power of many of the cuts. All of the<br />
technical work here is top-notch, the best money can be, so it’s small wonder the film<br />
is so impeccably crafted. Where Scorsese’s outsider status as a storyteller fails him is<br />
when it comes to tipping his hand towards the Jesuits. He makes it clear through his<br />
choices that he identifies with the young Jesuits who allow themselves to be broken<br />
and battered in order to become more Christlike in their own lives, hoping they may<br />
provide an example of their own for the Kakure Kirishitans to emulate. It is, in some<br />
ways, an act of hubris for the Jesuits to believe that their suffering brings them closer<br />
to Christ. There is a basic dichotomy between Eastern and Western philosophy, and<br />
that involves the focus of the teachings. Christianity promises a Paradise beyond this<br />
earth, a place where all good people go to be rewarded for eternity. It is quite a pitch<br />
when you’re talking to people whose day-to-day lives are so filled with random<br />
sorrow and hardship. Eastern thought is far more concerned with who we are during<br />
our time than what we’re going to do after death. That division is only one small part<br />
of what keeps these characters straining to push forward while hopelessly mired,<br />
bound to the flesh instead of free as a spirit. Scorsese clearly feels deeply about the<br />
material, but there are missed opportunities here, particularly in terms of how things<br />
are balanced.<br />
There is nothing more human than a basic sense of empathy for another<br />
human being, an understanding that we all share something. We can all understand<br />
what it feels like to love, to fight, to suffer, and to question your place in the grand<br />
scheme of things. When Silence does finally transcend, it works for reasons that<br />
entirely outside of religion or faith. It is not about who is right and who is wrong, but<br />
about finding purpose in even the worst of things, and about the ways small acts of<br />
rebellion can serve faith better than the loudest choir in the right time and place.
Change language