Silence (Picador Classics)

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even if [Rodrigues] was betraying [his fellow priests], he was not betraying his Lord. He loved him now in a different way from before. Everything that had taken place until now had been necessary to bring him to this love. “Even now I am the last priest in this land. But Our Lord was not silent. Even if he had been silent, my life until this day would have spoken of him” (190-191). How can one be both Japanese and western? How can one be a Christian and Japanese? Faced with two seemingly essentialist and inflexible ideologies, Endo sought to synthesise where it appeared there was neither room nor possibility for fusion. Not only did Japanese society appear "closed" and resistant to change, Christianity - in the form of Catholicism - appeared to him to be equally stubborn and insular.

Your European God", he says, "is male. A father who is hard and who likes to punish, but we Japanese prefer a female image of God who is warm-hearted and forgiving." Mr Kato thinks for a moment, and then he continues. "However, towards the end of his life Endo did come to believe that there was only one God, that male or female it was the same person, and this is what we see in his final novel Deep River [1994] when the Japanese tourists travel to India and find their spiritual selves." Verdi Productions". Verdifilms.com. Archived from the original on January 9, 2017 . Retrieved January 14, 2017. Several reviewers such as Justin Chang and Mark Kermode emphasized Scorsese's collaboration with his production crew and with his actors as contributing to the film's quality. Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Justin Chang called the film an "anguished masterwork" for Scorsese, stating: "Working with such sterling past collaborators as editor Thelma Schoonmaker, production designer Dante Ferretti and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, Scorsese has done more than resurrect a vision of feudal Japan... Silencefeels less like a feat of adaptation than an act of artistic submission". [78] Mark Kermode writing for The Guardian indicated exemplary performances by the range of Japanese supporting actors in the cast, stating: "The real stars however, are the Japanese cast, from Yōsuke Kubozuka's enigmatic wretch, Kichijirō... to Yoshi Oida's devout elder Ichizo, to whose village these priests bring both salvation and suffering. As a smiling, silver-tongued interpreter, Tadanobu Asano is a superb foil to the inquisitor, Inoue, played with fly-swatting menace by a wheedling Issey Ogata". [79]Concannon, Philip (December 19, 2016). "Silence". The Skinny. Archived from the original on October 30, 2017 . Retrieved October 29, 2017. Today there is an Endo Museum in Nagasaki, the Japanese city that has the most profound connections with the west. Here one can discover Endo's papers, manuscripts, letters, books, pens, even his clothes, all housed in a building that faces west. In Japan Shusaku Endo is remembered as a deeply-respected author who wished to bring about a coming together of Japanese manners with European ideas, but he has his critics. Soon after the opening of the museum in 1999, a memorial plate that had been established to commemorate the novel Silence was defaced with paint by Japanese Catholics who objected to the fact that Rodrigues chose to step willingly on the image of Christ.

Martin Scorsese's SILENCE Gets Financing; Poised to Start Filming July 2014 in Taiwan". Collider.com. April 19, 2013. Archived from the original on February 23, 2014 . Retrieved March 2, 2014. Rodrigues' journal depicts his struggles: he understands suffering for the sake of one's own faith; but he struggles over whether it is self-centered and unmerciful to refuse to recant when doing so will end another's suffering. At the climactic moment, Rodrigues hears the moans of those who have recanted but are to remain in the pit until he tramples the image of Christ. As Rodrigues looks upon a fumi-e, Christ breaks his silence: "You may trample. You may trample. I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. You may trample. It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross." Rodrigues puts his foot on the fumi-e. Adam Driver Joins Martin Scorsese's 'Silence' ". IndieWire. January 13, 2014. Archived from the original on March 2, 2014 . Retrieved March 2, 2014. Endo worried that Christianity might well be ill-suited to the temperament of Japanese religious psychology, which he felt demanded a more forgiving and accommodating God than the image of God that was being propagated by the Catholic church. In these circumstances Endo's task became clear to him. He would attempt to retailor Christianity into a suit of clothes that could sit comfortably upon the Japanese body. But, as he was endeavouring to do this, he would also be wrestling the face of Japanese society around and pointing it towards a mirror where it would have no choice but to stare at its own hypocrisies. Mr Kato's question still hangs in the air. Why, he wants to know, does a Caribbean-born British writer consider Shusaku Endo to be a great personal influence upon his own work? The truth is I have travelled all the way to Japan, in part, to seek out an answer to this very question. I have already told Mr Kato that the gentle intimacy of Endo's narrative style, with his deeply reflective first-person voices, has always appealed to me. Despite the intrusive "barrier" of translation, Endo's novels have always provided me with valuable instruction in how to locate character.

Silence Resources

Box-Office Pileup: Three Major Films Crash and Burn in Same Weekend". The Hollywood Reporter. January 13, 2017. Archived from the original on August 5, 2017 . Retrieved August 4, 2017. Caesar A. Montevecchio of the University of Notre Dame published a theological assessment of the spiritual themes in the film concentrating on the act of priestly renunciation depicted towards the end stating: "This climactic scene of Rodrigues trampling the fumi-e makes clear that Silence is as much about the object of Christian faith as it is the experience of that faith. As ambient and live sound are washed out entirely, Rodrigues hears the voice of Christ telling him to trample, that it was to be trampled upon that Christ came into the world. The object of faith becomes a Christ who is a hero of pity, who takes up the weakness and suffering of humankind as his cross, rather than a hero of triumphant resolve. The Jesus of Silence is one of utter kenosis (self-emptying), and one who in the mercy of that kenosis radically sympathizes with the weakness, and frailty, of human beings, even ones like Judas and Kichijirō." [94]

Francis Mathy, SJ, of Sophia University, (1974), "Introduction", Endo Shusaku, Wonderful Fool ( Obaka San), Tokyo: Tuttle, p. 6, ISBN 9780068598534. Plot [ edit ] Rodrigues visualizes the face of Christ in the Veil of Veronica form painted by El Greco. A fumi-e bearing an image of Christ, similar to the one portrayed in the film.

Visit Nagasaki, Silence Feature". Nagasaki Prefecture Official Visitor Guide. Nagasaki Prefecture Tourism Association. Archived from the original on December 22, 2016 . Retrieved December 22, 2016. Stoyan Zaimov (December 6, 2016). "Martin Scorsese on Screening of Christian Persecution Film 'Silence' on Vatican's Giant Crucifix". The Christian Post. Archived from the original on December 7, 2016. Andrew Garfield Set to Headline Silence". ComingSoon.net. May 7, 2013. Archived from the original on March 2, 2014 . Retrieved March 2, 2014. They realized that the Christians were emboldened by this example of people dying for their faith,” says Fr. Ucerler. “They decided they must find a better strategy. ‘What would really break the Christian community?’ they thought. ‘Well, if we could get not only the Christians but also the Jesuits to renounce their own f Tom Brueggemann (January 15, 2017). "Arthouse Audit: Audiences Skip Martin Scorsese's 'Silence' ". IndieWire. Archived from the original on January 17, 2017 . Retrieved January 21, 2017.