The story of two Catholic priests who travel to Japan in an attempt to find a missing priest Father Ferreira. They encounter a lot of violence and torture to the people who are seen to be Christians and practicing that faith.
Rodrigues and Garrpe are the two priests that want to head across to Japan, seeing it as their mission to find out what has happened to Ferreira as they have heard great stories about how many people he helped become Christians and practice the faith. The only problem with this is that Ferreira has not been heard from for many years, so they don’t even know if he is actually still alive.
The film is pretty tough going in all honesty with the 161 minute running time feeling that long as well. It’s slow-moving at times to build up the tension and really trying to make you understand just how people were thinking about faith and religion back in the seventeenth century. I guess it also gives you hope though that people believe that you can be saved and certain people can really make a difference in your life.
When the pair arrive in the first village everyone wants to be blessed by them and at times they are pretty much seen as a God themselves. I think this is something that Rodrigues really loved and grew with, we end up seeing things and getting more of his story than that of Garrpe when they are separated to stand a better chance of survival. I wasn’t really expecting that as I thought we would flip between the two and see what paths they ended up on. Rodrigues begins to liken himself to Jesus
The torture scenes and methods are really tough viewing and you cannot help but feel sadness and sorrow, as this would have been what happened to people going against the rules. This is something that begins to test the young priests and how much they believe in the faith that they preach about. Will it break them down or will they remain strong to what they believe?
It was pretty tricky at times to watch and understand about the whole faith thing, as I am not religious at all and I can imagine it will have a very different impact with people who are very religious? Hoping that someone can be so kind to comment if they are and how they saw and found this film as I am sure that is something that will influence your views.
I thought Andrew Garfield put in a fantastic performance and really will make you look at him as an actor on another level. He really was engaging and carried the film very well considering he is in nearly every single scene. It was also great to see Liam Neeson taking on a serious role again reminding us that he can indeed act and not in an action film playing the same character over and over again. I don’t think we actually got enough from Adam Driver which was a slight shame as it looked as though we were going to get a lot from him as well.
A very interesting film from Martin Scorsese and it is a difficult one to watch at times but the performance from Garfield is outstanding. I am interested to see how this one is received and if it manages to pull in big audiences.