Rating: 47/100
*Ignores the stares from everyone reading this*
What???
*Sighes*
Fine. Yes. This movie does have Adam Driver in it. Please, just let me live my life. This is my saving grace during COVID-19 okay.
Silence was a weird mix of thought provoking ideas and amazing cinematography with a very slow plot and bad casting (I don’t mean Driver). Whoever said Garfield was a better lead than Driver was solely mistaken. Driver out acted Garfield in every scene they shared (see!), let alone having a better emotional depth on camera. It all comes to the eyes and Garfield’s eyes were too dead to play a man tormented in Japan.
Rodrigues was asked to do an unspeakable act, and yet I couldn’t believe Garfield as he struggled with the decision. Hands down, this was the thing that destroyed it all. This was the downfall of what might have been a great movie. Well, a few other things would have to be fixed to actually reach that status...
Like the plot. There’s being forced fed information, and then there’s being told the right information to understand what’s going on. At one point, Rodrigues is threatened, but then ends up in a posh spot, even getting to practice his religion in the open. Okay… let me waste some valuable connection time trying to figure out how this even happened. Two plus two was most definitely not adding up. That’s one example of many times I was confused. I wont even attempt to understand the fisherman.
Why couldn’t I just ignore all these mistakes for the sake of the message? ...because these are the things that can destroy a good movie. They essentially disconnect a viewer from the plot. Once that happens, their mind will go elsewhere and all hope is lost.
I’m a hard core movie watcher who will try her best to stick with a movie until the end. If I’m struggling, imagine the average viewer. And unlike Bad Times at the El Royale, which has an almost identical run time, I was hitting that pause button a few too many times in Silence. A nice, sharp knife was most definitely needed in the editing room. The message turned into a merry-go-round of not putting the foot on the religious artifact. Nothing more, nothing less. I think I got the point after the first emotional moment of fighting against the act. Maybe spending more time pulling it out of Garfield and less time repeating the same message would have been better. I didn’t get anything more out of the fifth time the idea was talked about.
So how do I pair all of this negativity with the other end of the spectrum?
Silence was not an easy movie to rate.
Shot mostly in Taiwan, the movie is stunning in the exterior shots. No surprise that it was up for an Oscar. Scorsese was refreshing which shocked me. For some reason I expected him to be stuck in his ways, forcing the same old filming techniques down everyone’s throats. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe that’s what he did, but to me, the filming was fresh. I could also be giving Scorsese too much credit here. He’s in charge of getting that range out of Garfield… hmmmmm… Let’s just walk away knowing that the shots were great. Breathtaking in fact. A clear winner. Which made it very hard for me to rate.
I can’t end this without spending a quick moment on the message. Not the story, because the plot is lacking in a lot of things. Depending on a viewer’s beliefs, this story is going to be interpreted in a myriad of different ways. Being someone who isn't religious, I saw this as a means of bringing pain to a people that died for nothing. Please don’t bash me. I’ve heard a hundred different things from a hundred different people. I’m not saying that how you feel is wrong. This is just my interpretation. Here’s the thing though, the writing allows anyone to get any message out of the story. There is no right or wrong answer in the end. There is no side picked. I felt this was one of the most unbiased religious themed movies. I think that alone is a feat. It really leaves room for the viewer to walk out with the message that they need to hear.
But in the end, Driver was jipped and I don’t recommend it for his fan club. He was forced to lose a lot of weight and it wasn’t the most flattering for him.
Happy Watching
Love Kait