How "Scorsese" Is Silence? | Video Essay

We look at legendary director Martin Scorsese’s most recent film, Silence (2016), in the context of his filmography. How much do his trademark style and thematic interests show up here? Does this feel like a “Scorsese” film?

Transcript provided by Youtube:

00:02
It’s been 50 years since Martin Scorsese made his first feature film, “Who’s That Knocking At My Door?”
00:08
The rest is film history. Although he’s known for his investigations of mobster pathology,
00:14
he’s explored a variety of genres, from female-driven dramedy “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and black comedy “The King of Comedy”,
00:21
to horror remake “Cape Fear” and historical fiction adaptation “Age of Innocence”.
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“Silence”, the director’s latest film, is a polarizing creation, loved by many, while dismissed by others as overlong and
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unusually restrained for Scorsese, which leads us to ask: How “Scorsese” is
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“Silence”. An adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s novel, “Silence” follows two Jesuit priests from 17th Century Portugal
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(Rodriguez, played by Andrew Garfield, and Garube, played by Adam Driver) searching Japan for their vanished mentor Liam Neeson’s Father Ferreira,
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who apostatized or renounced his belief after undergoing severe torture.
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“He is so unsure now. A man who has found peace. Let him guide you along his path… the path of mercy.
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At first glance, “Silence” feels very different for Scorsese.
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There’s no slick, fast-moving camerawork, rapid editing, or Rolling Stones soundtrack.
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But when you look in more detail, “Silence” does incorporate many of the techniques
01:29
we associate with Scorsese’s best films. If the setting and specifics seemed to be a departure, the film still speaks to scorsese’s
01:37
eeepest Career wide interests and themes and given that silence was a passion project 25 years in the making
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The subject is clearly close to the directors heart
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[for] [a] long period of time I was fascinated by
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stories of the missionaries
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[when] I was about eight or nine, Ten years old
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And I wanted to become a [marital] missionary is that right? So how does silence fit in with the rest of scorsese’s filmography?
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Scorsese studied to become a priest in high school before switching course to pursue film at nyu
02:09
his Italian Catholic upbringing makes its mark on Several of his earliest film
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Especially mean streets which sees harvey Keitel’s character Charlie struggling to reconcile his catholicism with his life in the Mafia
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[the] opening of the film sets us this dynamic with a god-like voiceover from scorsese himself
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Addressing Keitel’s character over a black screen you don’t make up for your sins in the church
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Could do it in the streets you do it at home
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The rest is bullshit. You [know] it in raging bull
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Catholicism entered the bedroom [as] the crosses and religious icons on the wall awkwardly clash with Jake and Vicki’s attempts at Physical intimacy
02:49
The symbols reflect his deeply entrenched hang-up
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Jake can’t reconcile [chaste] adulation of his wife with a healthy sexual relationship
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scorsese would deal with
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Christianity more explicitly in the last temptation of christ in this retelling of the figures early life we see Jesus grapple with human
03:06
Temptation ranging from self-doubt to lust and the directors explorations of Faith aren’t confined to Christianity in
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1997’s Kundun he dramatizes the coming-of-age of the 14th Dalai, Lama
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all of these films look at faith in conflict with both external circumstances and inner demons
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Score [see] whose characters aren’t [saints] for human beings and often ones who are frustratingly unlikable or consumed in
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self-Destructive behavior their limitations tend to most overwhelmingly from within
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But I think there’s a director. [who’s] [is] able to portray characters?
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who are inherently self-destructive doing something that will not benefit them and seemingly unable to stop doing, so
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Silence gives us something a bit different with these characters instead of a self-destructive or self-absorbed character
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We Witness Rodriguez sacrificing him son
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[Ferreira] explains that the inquisitors will only spare five Japanese prisoners from Further torture if Rodriguez apostatize Errs
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Rodriguez is conflicted does renouncing his identity as the priest mean renouncing his face
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But he can’t justify prolonging the suffering of others
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He realizes that public renunciation is the only way to be inwardly faithful to the compass of his priesthood
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So this conflict of religious piety becomes the contract between external and internal
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Identities a divide scorsese has dramatized time and again throughout his filmography
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Characters grappled with how to be moral in a world that’s not whether it’s the mob finance or Las Vegas
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The difference in Silence is that our main character actually does manage [redemption] [even] [if] the path to it is [counter-intuitive]?
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[on] first [viewing] the cinematography courtesy of [Rodrigo] [Creato] may feel the most distant from Classic scorsese
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There’s nothing like the breathtaking
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Copacabana tracking shot or cool pushes into close-Ups that we get into [film] shot by Michael Bauhaus
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Silence is primarily composed of subtle long takes and Tableau shots that work with visibility and
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Concealing what we hope to see its first shot is a long. Take of deep mist
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Obscuring our vision as we wait for figures to emerge furthering this motif of what can’t be seen or known
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scorsese incorporates torches illuminating small spaces within expanses of extreme darkness as
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Characters plunge Forward into the impenetrable
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unseeable unknown to wrestle with religious belief and doubt
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The stark minimalist camera also captures violence in a different style than is usual for scorsese
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[think] back to the bar fight in [main] Street which made use of quick cuts and a pop song by the renowned
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And makes a violence [seems] jazzy and exciting there is an adrenaline rush to this and other scenes of violence and scorsese
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In the end the violence never offers a solution. [it’s] an empty way for his characters to assert their masculinity
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He’s a more exciting life or express their demons and it generally leads to self-destruction
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But in silence the violence is never enticing or exciting at all
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It’s procedural and excruciating the inquisitors torture practicing Christians as part of their program of religious persecution
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in
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this scene they tie three prisoners two crosses out at sea and allow them [to] die over the course of a few days as the
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Tide rolls in and out
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Witnessing violence becomes torture in and of itself later Rodriguez is forced to watch an emaciated guru paid drowned from a distance
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Long takes and matter of fact wide shots forced us to endure the violence with Rodriguez as a form of torture
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We’re no longer getting that ambivalent cinematic pleasure that we might have experienced in his earlier movies
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It’s a striking departure for a director. Who’s known [for] how he shoots silence
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Yes
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It’s also an in-Your-face
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expression of the conclusion scorsese has always come to and violence doesn’t pay it doesn’t redeem and isn’t the answer and
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Violence is something that in the American tradition is very often seen as redemptive and for scorsese
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It’s never redemptive redemption comes from somewhere [else]. We may think it’s in violence, but it’s not
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Even as much of silence looks different a few sequences visually evoke some of his most
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recognizable cinematic techniques most striking is the slow motion when Rodriguez
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Apostatize ‘as the sound drops out and his movement takes on a physical grace and gravitas deepening the impact of the act
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This may remind you of the opening credits of raging bull as Robert
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De Niro’s bars by himself
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Slow-motion lends a certain beautiful stateliness to the introduction of his character in contrast to the behavior
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We’ll see in his life outside the ring in that film slo-mo also emphasizes heightened attention
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focus and Paranoia throughout his filmography
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scorsese uses slow-mo to underscore key narrative moments like when he
08:05
Emphasizes the importance of Robert de Niro’s character in Mean Streets Johnny Boy the Rolling Stones?
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Jumpin Jack Flash plays in Charlie’s mind as he watches Johnny boy approach through the red lit health stage of the bar and the drawn-out
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Moment establishes that these characters lives are irrevocably intertwined gristedes use of slow-mo might not seem
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Revolutionary today as it’s been so often copied that it feels standard or even overused but over the years the director has
08:33
Experimented with the technique for maximum narrative impact and in silence his sparing use of slow-mo for this single shot
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Underscores it as the most crucial moment underpinning the story elsewhere in Silence
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We see a few overhead shot which scorsese often uses to represent the eyes of God
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Alfred Hitchcock an important influence for scorsese was also well known for using crane shot
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Looming above the characters these moments aren’t about morally judging the characters
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But simply suggesting that some power above is watching
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Scorsese uses them after significant decisions or actions are taken like at the end of taxi driver when the camera drifts above
09:13
surveying the Extreme violence in
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Silence for help these shots give the spiritual presence of God a voice or at least Watchful eyes
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So even if God may be silent perhaps scorsese creates a spiritual perspective through cinema
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Itself to Imply [that] we’re never truly alone
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Silence gives us three strands of narration to our letters one from Ferrara and one from Rodriguez
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Detailing their experiences in [Japan] to the priests in Portugal the third is Rodriguez’s intern model our
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father in Heaven praised be thy name
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I’m just a foreigner who brought disaster
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That’s what they think with me now
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Narration might be one of scorsese’s most recognizable trademark
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We touched on it earlier with mean streets
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[Horsey] [season] sports over often paired with appealing music to entice the viewer into the world in Goodfellas
10:07
Henry Hills smooth seductive narration aligns us with his perspective
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As Far back [as] I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster
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We go along with him at first [enjoying] his youth spent idolizing gangster, right?
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But as he descends into his increasingly erratic drug Fueled Paranoia
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We start to reconsider accepting his skewed Viewpoint
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Here and in other films like taxi driver the seductive yet suspicious [voiceover] creates this growing disconnect between an unreliable narrator
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and us the viewer as the story inevitably goes south
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Taxi Drivers Travis Bickle reads aloud his diary and voiceover feeding the audience a destroyer [skien] internal Monologue
10:48
Some nail real rain will come and wash all the scum off [the] street
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From this privileged vantage point on the intimate psychology of Travis’s downward spiral we watch with foreboding feeling
11:00
uncomfortably at odds with his disturbing point of view and perhaps a little
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Complicit in what we see so we can conclude that a knowing play with perspective and morality
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Is key to many of scorsese’s narration?
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But in silence par from Travis Bickel’s warped diary we hear an earnest internal record
11:19
Rodriguez’s struggle with [God] silence in the face [of] human suffering
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Instead of manipulating the outside viewers perspective the narrations and silence follow
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Spiritual Journeys inward all three narrations are delivered in the second person or few
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Addressing either another character in the letters or God in Rodriguez’s [prayers], but despite Rodriguez’s pleading
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God doesn’t respond to him. This is the silence of the title Rodriguez is a man of Faith without [a] response
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During his imprisonment his narration progresses from full uses of prayer [and] depleting Staccato Bursts
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Apostatize his crisis of Faith punctuating the horrors on screen
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Finally as [Rodriguez] looks down at the [Fumi] a we hear a new voice. It’s alright
12:06
Step on me so here instead of using that narration to entertain us from a psychological distance as he’s done before
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Scorsese Fine-Tunes has technique to plant us deep inside Rodriguez’s mind and include us in his intimate spiritual search
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[why] because your silence is terrible last but not least those endings
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Scorsese tends to conclude his films with his protagonists in Limbo Rather than triumph or total destruction
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The character often humbled or having left his glory days behind
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usually unable to achieve deep change redemption or self understanding
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Goodfellas retired Mobster Henry Hill leads a quiet life in
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Suburbia the wolf of Wall Street’s Jordan Belfort does [assent] in a cushy jail before giving [motivational] seminars in New Zealand and
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in Casino the Soundtrack of Jean-Luc Godard Contempt plays while ace Rothstein
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reflect on his [lost] Golden age of vegas in Silence back feeling of limbo persists
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Rodriguez is literally living out his final days in exile
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Having been forced to leave the church and assimilate into Japanese culture
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but scorsese offers a bit more closure for his characters interstate in this film when the camera pushes inside of
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Rodriguez’s casket, we see in the film’s final shot that he’s clutching a small wooden Crucifix although. He’s been cast out into limbo
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[he] isn’t a stunted static soul
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He’s held on to his faith through it all so [to] return to our original question how scorsese is [silenced] in the end
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We can see that his classic toolkit and fascinations are written all over it
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But he updates these familiar techniques to dig deeper into recurring themes and the results mines new territory
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Scorsese isn’t content to make and remake the same film instead. He keeps his idiosyncrasies while continuing to evolve
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only God [can] answer
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Yeah