Review year started late, yes, but brilliantly: second instalment, Martin Scorsese's Silence.
Silence is the 24th feature film directed by Martin Scorsese, one of the world's handful bona fide directing geniuses, here in his best shape since, well, his previous Wolf of Wall Street (2013). From 1980 (Raging Bull) to 1995 (Casino) Scorsese penned an almost (except Cape Fear, 1992), uninterrupted masterpiece run resumed in 2006 (The Departed) and 2013 (the aforementioned). Add Taxi Driver (1976) and you have here the 12th MacMahonian certified Scorsese masterpiece. All remaining 12, however, are very well worth seeing.
Silence is a free adaptation of Shusaku Endo's eponymous novel, in which for full disclosure I must – considering the context very appropriately - confess I have a sort of vested interest, having lived in Japan from 1994 to 1999 and assiduously attended assorted academic functions pertaining to the subject matter: the persecution of Christians in Japan after the Tokugawa Shogunate decided to close the country to outside influence in the 17th century, and in particular the famous Nagasaki martyrdoms.
Scorsese concentrates on the figure of father Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield, up to the task with more than a little help from his director) who eventually became interpreter for the Shogun, but not before suffering long and intense physical and spiritual agonies related to how to best keep faith and health, of self and flock, in the face of intolerable cruelty. Subject matter (guilt, remorse, violence) are typical Scorsese, but the rendering at his best, i.e. stellar. Father Rodrigues´s (spoiler alert) finally apostatizes, if indeed that's what he did, but whatever it was he did did break him. Scorsese's Rodrigues is a sort of reverse Travis Bickle, a tragic figure of Learean proportions, words well measured, portraying as I recall nowhere else in film History or elsewhere an anything but lesser men giving in.
Donizetti reportedly once quipped, after hearing Lohengrin, that such work could not be evaluated in one single hearing and he had no intention of sitting through it a second time. Turning that around, I'd say that Silence on first viewing gives you more than you bargained for and I for one plan to come back soon to make sure I didn’t miss anything.