Saw it Last Night: Joyless & Bleak Film
I saw Silence last night at a packed industry screening. You should've seen the audience members walking out of the screening. No applause when the credits came up, silence on Scorsese's credit as well. Again, these are industry people who normally clap for most films.
I never walk out of films, but I had wanted to walk out around the time some of the Japanese Christians had the ocean tide rise and fall over them repeatedly for days. It was really hard to watch. I started asking myself, "why am I watching something so unpleasant?" I might as well be kicking myself in the balls somewhere else. But somehow I kept on watching.
Here are a few spoilers if you actually plan on seeing this film.
I found the Inquisitor Inouye's whole performance offensive in a Breakfast at Tiffany's Mickey Rooney way. High-pitched hammed up horrible English accent.
The only parts of the film I found remotely interesting were when Liam Neeson's character finally shows up to challenge the Padre's beliefs. Also Asano Tadanobu added a bit more respectable performance to keep the film from continually slowing to an unbearable crawl.
In some ways, this film feels like anti-Japanese propaganda, with the continual sadism and persecution of the Christians. I find the aim of missionaries to be somewhat arrogant and ignorant. They are in a foreign country, not to learn the local customs, but to preach about their superior morality and the righteous path. Christians may find this film to be interesting as a "test of faith" type of way. If you are not religious, you may wonder why you are suffering through the task of watching this film. Normally, I can frame religious themes in a historical and cultural context, but religion is such a central theme of this film it's impossible to see around it.
In any case, I don't know how I sat through this film for an additional hour and a half after the ocean torture scene. There's about maybe 30 minutes of this film worth watching, which is obviously not worth it when you have to sit through more than two and a half torturous hours to see it.