Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese gave a private screening of his new film Silence to a group of 300 Jesuits in Rome. 

The film, based on a novel by Shusaku Endo, tells the story of 17th-century Jesuit missionaries who travel to Japan in search of their mentor, who is rumoured to have renounced the faith under torture at the hands of the Japanese regime.

After the screening Mr. Scorsese told the audience “this is a story of faith that is carried by the Jesuits, so I wanted to share it first with Jesuits”.  He spoke about his relationship with the novel which was first recommended to him by a Catholic priest in New York in 1988 after the release of his Last Temptation of Christ.  He read the novel while filming Kurosawa’s Dreams in Japan in 1989 (in which he acted the role of Vincent Van Gogh).  He immediately bought the film rights but it was another 26 years before the film was completed.  “There were so many margin notes in my copy I started to include the year!” he joked.

Having grown up in a rough New York neighbourhood, Scorsese told the audience that violence, fear and oppression were part of his everyday life, and he found beauty and calm only in visits to the cinema, to which he was introduced by his parish priest.  As a result, he observed,  “faith and compassion are always present in my films”.  Shusako Endo once told Scorsese that apostasy could be seen as the truest test of faith, whilst the drama of  Silence shows faith opposed to compassion – Silence of the title is the silence or indifference of God to the struggles of conscience of the oppressed.

Fr Antonio Delfau SJ of the Chilean Province saw the screening and commented: “Silence explores the link between faith, betrayal and martyrdom.  It asks a lot of complex questions which will probably lead to many thoughtful discussions about the mystery of evil, suffering and torture and the silence of God, but also about the nature of faith and compassion.” 

He observed that the film was very nuanced: “ The characterisations of the Japanese were very subtle, you were not on safe territory siding only with the Europeans and the oppressed (as for example in Roland Joffe’s The Mission of 1986)”.

Fr Delau expects supporting actor Oscar nominations for Issei Ogata who plays the Inquisitor - “the price of your glory is their suffering” he declares to Rodrigues; or Yosuke Kubozuka who plays the traitorous interpretor: “how can God love a wretch like me?”

Oscar nomination is also expected for the lead actor Andrew Garfield, who undertook the spiritual exercises in a retreat at St Beuno’s as part of his preparation for the role of Fr Rodrigues.

Read also: Evangelization in the country of SILENCE. Interview with Fr. Adolfo Nicolás