"Silence" (2016) movie review

Two women for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration suggested that I should watch Silence (2016). So I did.

Vorgriffe

I put some "preapprehensions" on the record before I took the time to watch "Silence" this afternoon.

From what I have read or heard or fantasize about the movie, I expected that it would:

- be pretentious;

- distort the real history of the Japanese martyrs;

- emphasize classic Japanese Shinto-Buddhist spirituality;

- downplay the necessity of preaching Jesus as the Savior of all of God's children;

- justify apostasy as the highest form of love for God and neighbor--the greatest evil is death of the innocent, and therefore the greatest good is to save the innocent by repudiating the gospel;

- silently recommend that Christians should be silent in today's culture wars because preaching Jesus does more harm than good;

- cultivate indifferentism: if God is love, and loves all of His children whole-heartedly at all times and in all places, then why should missionaries go out to all the world?

"Can anything good come out of Scorsese?"

I'm not saying that I'm being fair to the movie. Obviously, a good man would WATCH it with an open mind before judging it. I am not a good man, but I would love to have a good conversation with these two women of faith, and so I am going to do my level best to set these prejudices aside and see what I can see in the movie itself. But it would be dishonest to pretend that I don't have prejudices. One of the morals of the story about tacit knowing is that we do make up our minds very rapidly, "in the blink of an eye," on very limited information.

I have never watched Mel Gibson's Apocalypto.

I would never have gone to see "The Passion of the Christ" if a good friend had not forced me to. We nearly had a fistfight talking about the movie afterward.

I avoided the Dan Brown books until students' questions forced me to slog through them.

I am avoiding most of the evangelical movies (e.g., God is not Dead, I & II).

OK. Done with the first part of it. I will try to pick up the movie some time this afternoon because you are my friends and because I love talking about things with you. Please forgive me my vorgriffe. That's life with me! :-O

Postgriffe (Hindsights)

I worked my way through the movie through the course of an afternoon. I took several breaks, especially a nap after the first 41 minutes. With 15 minutes to go, I got a peanut butter sandwich and some decaf. That helped.

"Thousands have died because of us."

So low Church--no vestments at Mass, no candles.

He is as guilty of superstition as they are, breaking his rosary up into parts. They could and did make rosaries, crosses themselves.

He is a simpleton. He is going to be crushed when his hero has committed apostasy and is living happily ever after.

"Why do these people have to suffer? Why has God chosen them to suffer so much?" He's going to be crushed and lose his faith in God but gain faith in men. Maybe he will kill the master!

Wasted teaching moments: baptism does not guarantee salvation. Not "once saved, always saved." God gives us free will and gives us the dignity of choice that we have as adults but not as children.

Sacramentals: "I was afraid they valued these things more than the realities of the faith." Well, then, TEACH them the value of sacramentals! Theoretically, these guys are JESUITS and should have a pretty thorough grounding on sacramental theology!

"How can I explain His silence to these people? He heard their prayers, did He hear their screams?" This man has no faith whatsoever!

"I'm just a foreigner who brought disaster. That's what they think of me now."

If there were a God, no one would suffer.

If there were a God, every time we prayed, we would hear Him.

If there were a God, we could summon Him whenever we wish.

"All the time Fr. Cabral was here, he taught, but he would not learn. He despised our language, our food, and our customs."

I just hate the way they portray this poor man, as if after 1600 years of history, he might have thought that faith could protect us from suffering and death. So stupid! Make a caricature of the faith, a paper tiger, attribute it to the Jesuits, and make us look ridiculous for having childish faith. It's so manipulative!

"Because of your dream of a Christian Japan."

"You were silent even to Him." That's an incredible distortion of the gospels! Luke: angels come and console Jesus. John: no agony. Words from the Cross. Prophecies of the Passion. The Last Supper--first Mass.

Yes, He suffered. Suffering does not have the last word. The last word is JOY.

"If Jesus were here, this is what He would do."

Mother Teresa: the silence of GOD!

"The Japanese are incapable of thinking of anything beyond nature. They have no concept of 'God.' The word Francis Xavier chose just means the sun. It rises every day."

"What is true in Europe is not true in Japan. Nobody has any business interfering with another person's culture."

"All religions are the same. There is no difference between Buddhism and Christianity."