It’s Hard Out Here For An Imperialist

At my first screening of Silence, George Lucas introduced Martin Scorsese’s new Japan-set spiritual drama at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre by praising it as a film that belongs in the 20th century. Whatever Lucas meant by that, Silence feels far older, even archaic, bemoaning as it does the arduousness of European colonialism. “It’s Hard Out… Read more »

Silence Asks, And Tries To Answer: What Would Jesus Do?

Martin Scorsese’s Silence, a ritualistically violent drama about the extinction of Catholicism in feudal Japan, is a film about faith that works like a mirror. It’s 1640 and the Tokugawa shogunate has executed 6,000 Christian villagers, mostly in tortures involving tatami mats. Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield), the last Portuguese padre in the country, wonders if… Read more »