martin scorsese
WHEN MARTIN SCORSESE’S Silence was released in 2016, many reviewers invoked the “L” word: legacy, a capstone for a lauded director with nearly five decades of films under his belt. But looking back, Silence is less like a summation and more like a fresh exploration of the themes that had always fascinated the director.
Scorsese, who based the film on the 1966 novel by Shūsaku Endō, spent more than 25 years laboring over its script and production. Two Portuguese Jesuit priests, Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver), journey into fog-shrouded Japan to find their former mentor, who seems to have abdicated his evangelizing responsibilities under fear of persecution and death. To restore his name and maintain their own faith, the two venture into a country where the government offers large cash rewards for exposing hidden priests.
Scorsese, talking about his upcoming film on the life of Jesus, told the Los Angeles Times: “I’m trying to find a new way to make it more accessible and take away the negative onus of what has been associated with organized religion.”
The real mystery of Killers of the Flower Moon is not who murdered so many Osage people, it’s how these murders can go on for so long — how the loss of life can be dismissed with such apathy.
The Gospel isn’t simplistic, and its representations shouldn’t be, either. If The Shack were created with this creed in mind, perhaps it would be a better work of art. Instead, sadly, it’s nothing more than a religious tract.