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Silence (1971) [Masters of Cinema #44] [Re-UP]

Posted By: Someonelse
Silence (1971) [Masters of Cinema #44] [Re-UP]

Silence (1971)
DVD9 | ISO+MDS | NTSC 4:3 | Cover | 02:10:16 | 6,29 Gb
Audio: Japanese-English AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subs: English, Japanese (hard for English parts)
Genre: Drama | Masters of Cinema #44

Director: Masahiro Shinoda
Stars: David Lampson, Mako, Eiji Okada

Adapted from the renowned novel by Shusaku Endo, Masahiro Shinoda’s 1971 film Silence (Chinmoku, co-written with Endo) explores the violent cultural conflict amid the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in seventeenth-century Japan. Shinoda’s excellent direction - coupled with a pensive score by the legendary Toru Takemitsu - gives cinematic expression to inner spiritual paradox, and imbues with religious mystery a landscape that seems already sentient with wind, rain, and light.

Two Portuguese priests disembark upon an anonymous Japanese shore. Under cover of nightfall, they seek to infiltrate those Christian sects driven underground by a ruthless magistracy, and re-establish the foothold of the Church on the isolated island-nation. Soon, however, the priests find themselves drawn into the mire of persecution, and gradually learn the truth behind the ominous disappearance of another Catholic missionary decades earlier…

By way of a heavily made-up and polyglot Tetsuro Tanba (Assassination, Kwaidan, Samurai Spy), Silence builds toward a revelation that approaches the impact of Colonel Kurtz’s entrance in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (or Marlon Brando’s take on Kurtz in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now). Rendered in a tender colour palette courtesy of master cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Yojimbo, Ugetsu monogatari), Silence unearths lies and beauty at the intersection of religion and Japanese society. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present for the first time on DVD in the UK Masahiro Shinoda’s Silence - based upon the same novel that has intrigued American filmmaker Martin Scorsese for decades, and spurred his own work on a film adaptation of the source material.


Shinoda’s film about humanism’s battle against the evils of religious fanaticism, religious persecution, and martyrdom - in which a pair of Portuguese Jesuit priests land on the shores of 17th century Japan, where Christianity is banned, attempting to spread the word of Jesus, but end up captured by the authorities - is a fascinating, harrowing, and uncompromising work.
Silence (1971) [Masters of Cinema #44] [Re-UP]

Based on a novel by Shusaku Endo, one of the most emminent names in modern Japanese literature, the scope and content of Masahiro Shinoda’s Silence (Chinmoku) is an almost impossibly ambitious one. Set in early 17th Century Japan where the growth of Christianity has been curtailed by a strict ban, it examines the complex notions of faith from a number of angles; from the authorities fearful of its practice, from the perspective of poor villagers persecuted for their beliefs, and from the point of view of the missionaries, struggling with the contradiction between their promise of eternal life and effectively bringing death to their congregation. Silence fully realises the epic qualities of the theme and the setting, without ever losing sight of the more personal and intimate considerations the situation gives rise to.

Silence (1971) [Masters of Cinema #44] [Re-UP]

Facing a deep crisis in Europe in the 16th Century with the protests of Martin Luther, the Catholic church has striven to spread its message of Christianity further and managed to quickly gain a substantial foothold in Japan. Fearful that the Jesuits were merely preparing the way for the conquest of Japan by the Spanish and Portuguese, and witnessing the growing discord coming from the Protestant Reformation groups, the shogunate banned Christianity and its practice was brutally oppressed by the ruling authorities. Arriving onto Japanese shores, two Jesuit priests, Padre Rogrigues (David Lampson) and Garrape (Don Kenny) come looking for one of their brethren, Padre Ferriera, who has been working in the region for 20 years, but has not been heard of in the five years since his arrest. The priests are welcomed by the citizens of Tomogi village, who have not had the guidance of a priest to hold mass for many years. Despite the great danger it means for them and the severe reprisals that will be carried out against the village by the authorities, they shelter the priests.

Silence (1971) [Masters of Cinema #44] [Re-UP]

The situation of Silence is one that is full of dramatic potential and Shinoda leaves no element of the diverse levels unexplored. On the larger scale, there is the conflict between the strength of faith of the Christian missionaries and the brutal repression of the Japanese authorities. Both represent two diverse cultures and ways of thinking that would seem to be incompatible and immovable, and the end result of this uneasy mix is indeed violent and brutal. In between, the lives of the ordinary, poor, hard-working people are deeply affected also by this division, attracted by the Christian belief that their reward will be great in the next life, but not fully able to reconcile it with their essential Japanese character. It gives many the strength required to affirm their beliefs, but the decision is not however an easy one, since the consequences of failing to renounce the banned religion are severe.

Silence (1971) [Masters of Cinema #44] [Re-UP]

Shinoda manages to demonstrate the deep sense of confusion, guilt and crisis this means for the people by bringing it down to a more human, personal level through the character of Kichijiro, an islander who feels he has betrayed his faith, his people and himself by renouncing the faith while others died for their beliefs. While there are some who unflinchingly are prepared to be martyred for their beliefs, Kichijiro represents the ordinary man, with normal weaknesses and doubts. As he cries out in despair at one point in the film, at an earlier time when the religion was permitted, he would have lived and died a good Christian – so why should he be so tested now? The crisis of faith is equally great for Father Rodrigues. Initially intolerant at the thought of anyone giving up their faith under duress, when he witnesses for himself the suffering the poor people endure – beatings, torture and execution – he tells them to do as the Magistrate says, and to step on the Christian painting when asked. With more and more villagers being taken hostage and dying on his account, he is struck by the suffering he is bringing to their already miserable lives. With his head worth 300 pieces of silver, when Christ was sold for only 30, he is unable to handle the impossible position in which he finds himself and leaves the village.

Silence (1971) [Masters of Cinema #44] [Re-UP]

Shinoda incredibly finds many ways of simultaneously representing the crisis of the individual within a larger picture, fully exploiting the all the dramatic possibilities that come with it. The sense of insignificance of a mere man and the immensity of powers outside his control are represented in the remarkable cinematography - in ancient volcanic rocks, in the powerful seas and the verdant richness of the land that the villagers cultivate, against which man is often framed like a dot on the landscape. Even when the crisis of Father Rodrigues is depicted like the Passion of Christ, complete with his own Judas and an interview with Pontius Pilate, the full extent of the human sacrifice required is completely felt.

Silence (1971) [Masters of Cinema #44] [Re-UP]

While fully elaborating and brilliantly dramatising the situation from numerous perspectives, Shinoda never resorts to reductive reasoning in the need to provide clarity or comprehension. There are no easy answers and there are no perfect insights to be gained into the workings of human reasoning and personal faith or the limits to which it can be pushed. There is only one source from which answers can come, but God’s silence is almost unbearable here. Rodrigues witnesses great horrors and shockingly inventive tortures enacted on those who refuse to apostatise - as well as being subjected to them himself – but cannot fathom the minds or the reasoning of those who carry them out. Nor can he even understand the reasoning of those suffering Japanese Christians – is it their faith and belief that drives them or some other innate cultural or national pride that is incompatible with the seeds sown by Christianity? Such are the impossible questions raised by the film that the viewer is held right through to the end, never knowing what decision Rodrigues will come to, nor what decision they would make in the same position.
Silence (1971) [Masters of Cinema #44] [Re-UP]

Special Features:
• Newly restored high-definition Toho transfer
• New and improved optional English subtitles
• Full-colour PDF facsimiles of two historical texts long out-of-print:
—- A History of the Missions in Japan and Paraguay by Cecilia Mary Caddell (314 pages, c. 1856)
—- Japan’s Martyr Church by Sister Mary Bernard (130 pages, c. 1926)
Silence (1971) [Masters of Cinema #44] [Re-UP]


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