For the first time since 2017, I have watched Martin Scorsese’s trilogy on faith- “The Last Temptation of Christ”, “Kundun” and “Silence” in its entirety. That it happened to be spread out through Holy Week- with “Last Temptation” on Palm Sunday, “Kundun” on Good Friday and “Silence” on Easter- was a coincidence, but that made each viewing experience all the more meaningful. Watching these three films, interconnected by themes and ideas that only grow the more one watches, is a profoundly spiritual moment.
I’ve written much about these films over the years, and even recorded a podcast about them in 2017 that you can hear below. I’m not a religious individual at all, really, but I do have faith. What speaks to me so much about these films is how Scorsese and his collaborators approach the nature of faith as a process, and how having faith is the hardest thing to have when the world around you seems to reject your personal ideas. That all three revolve around religious leaders struggling to espouse their faith against political backdrops that reject those ideas is less an intentional choice on Scorsese’s part, I think, but one that happens to find its way coming through the choice of material he brings to the screen in each instance. His main focus is on the personal faith of his characters.
When considering these three films as a whole, I cannot help but wonder if “The Last Temptation of Christ” might be the most accessible of the three. That seems like a ridiculous thing to say, given the furor over its making by conservative Christians and evangelicals in the ’80s, so much that people wanted the film to be destroyed, but because of how familiar the story of Jesus is, even this adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel, for as much as it changes the focus of that story to explore Jesus’s humanity, and portraying his path to being the Messiah as a struggle, gives us a story we recognize. When it deviates, like in its final act- where Jesus is afforded the opportunity of a human life with family rather than dying on the Cross- is where the controversy reaches its most understandable peaks, but it takes actually watching the film rather than reading about it to see that, instead of vulgarizing the story of Christ, Scorsese’s film infuses it with humanity and empathy that allows us to see Jesus’s struggle towards faith as not dissimilar to our own. It’s hard to think of a work of art that has given us a more accessible portrait of Jesus, even if Judas’s obvious Bronx accent (coming from the mouth of the great Harvey Keitel) throws us off a bit.
“Kundun” is the most conventional of the three. Written by “E.T.’s” Melissa Mathison, the film follows a very standard biopic shape and structure as it chronicles the life of the 14th Dalai Lama, from the time he is discovered four years after the death of his successor, to when he must escape to India after Chinese occupation of Tibet. Scorsese’s direction, however, is anything but conventional, and I think the decision to have non-actors appear in many of the central roles was a key part of that. The film feels like a documentary, with Roger Deakins’s camera, and Phillip Glass’s music, putting us in a state of introspection and emotional connection to what we are witnessing. And we feel like witnesses throughout the film, to a world we are not familiar with, to rituals that are foreign to us, but also to struggles we instinctively understand, because the plight of the oppressed is something that connects this story to the stories we are most familiar with from the Bible. That connection between faiths would find its most challenging narrative in Scorsese’s third film in his trilogy.
This was only my fourth time watching “Silence.” There was some that I forgot about it, but much I hadn’t. This time watching it, however, probably crystallized the film within my memory banks more than any other viewing, however. Adapted from the novel by Shusaku Endo, it tells the story of two Jesuit priests (played by Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) who go to 17th Century Japan to spread the word of God. They also go to find Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson); there is word that he renounced the faith, bowing to the political pressures, and oppression, of Christianity in Japan, at the time. They are taken into Japan by Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozuka), a fisherman whom has exiled himself from Japan, and who is supposedly Christian, but he claims he is not. As they begin their travels through Japan, they find it inhospitable to their message, even if some of the people they meet appear to be.
One thing I forgot about “Silence” was how Scorsese seemed to structure this film like Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” also about a young soldier sent into the depths of Hell to find an older officer who renounced the ways they were taught. That film is based on Hearts of Darkness, and this film, with Garfield’s voiceover chronicling his journey, with where that journey leads him, hits every beat along the way, all the while holding true to the ideas and themes about faith that Scorsese had explored in “Last Temptation” and “Kundun.” Eventually, Rodrigues (Garfield’s character) finds himself faced with the Inquisitor that challenged Ferreira’s faith, and must confront a harsh reality- Christianity can never flourish in Japan. That leads him to a confrontation with Ferreira, where we learn a great deal about where Rodrigues’s mentor stands on issues of faith, and how he reconciles them with the world around him. It’s one of the most fascinating exchanges, both in what it says, and what it implies, in the entire trilogy. I’m reminded of the scene where Jesus, after he comes down from the cross, and has lived life as a human, confronts Paul (Harry Dean Stanton); there’s something in both moments that cuts through to the heart of each film that is profound, and challenging.
When I went to “Silence” in theatres, I went with one of my best friends, Ryan, who is a devout Christian. The conversation we had after it is one I will never forget, and it’s interesting how he and I responded to different elements in the film’s story. He looked at the persecution of Christians in Japan as a central part of his experience with the movie, whereas I responded to the ways Rodrigues and Ferreira’s faith is challenged in that world, and how the truth we thought we knew throughout the film may not be the truth as it exists in characters. I think both viewpoints are completely valid lenses to look at this film through, and one of the reasons “Silence” is so difficult a piece of cinema compared to the films before it in the trilogy is how one can react to both the persecution of the faithful, as well as the idea that religion is not something that can (or should) be forced on people, and it will never truly take hold if it is. There is not an easy antagonist on the other side of Rodrigues and Garrpe, Driver’s character, even if you think there is.
I wonder if part of the reason “Silence” does not connect with people quite as much as “Last Temptation” or “Kundun” do is because Rodrigues is not as interesting a character as Jesus or the Dalai Lama are. Here, I think the most compelling character is Kichijiro. Even I’m not entirely sure how to process this character. He is continuously asking Rodrigues for absolution for his sins, and yet, he has no problem stepping on the seal, the way the Japanese have Christians renounce their faith, only for the cycle to continue. In a way, he is a test of Rodrigues’s own faith, and his own ability to minister, but he’s also a lesson about how Christianity takes root in Japan, one that is in keeping with what Ferreira says to him late in the film. That does not quite explain the last time with see Kichijiro, however, which makes us question just how sincere his faith, and constant renouncement of it, is.
No American filmmaker will likely dive deeper into the struggles of faith, both on a personal and a broader level, than Martin Scorsese does in these three films. I’ve seen plenty of very good to great religiously-themes movies over the years, but these will always stand above them because of the artistry, and intellect, Scorsese brings to them. They are significant meditations on the spiritual within us all.
