San Diego Reader January 5, 2017 53
Boresese S
ilence isn’t golden. He may not be the hardest working man in show business
— not with just one theatrical release every two years — but at 74, and with almost 60 features, shorts, and documentaries behind him, it’s a safe bet that Martin Scorsese is America’s Patron Saint of Cinema. Only Clint Eastwood comes close. At this late stage of the game,
Scorsese appears to be stacking his final chips of reverence, demanding that audiences look upon him as a serious artist. What does he think we’ve been doing for the past four decades? It was a scant 15 years ago when
voting members? Never mind that nobody remem-
MOVIES
bers the winners three years later. Scorsese still feels the need to impress the Academy war horses, of which he is now a silver-haired stallion. Whatever their virtues, he had to make Age of Innocence, Kundun, and Gangs of New York, before the Academy finally got around to bestowing upon him their golden doorstop of approval for what is easily his weakest show- ing, The Departed. Now comes this
Scorsese began lobbing one Hail Mary pass after another, hoping to score points with Oscar voters. Seated before his family television set in Little Italy and taking in the yearly Oscarcasts, with their air of Academy piety, must have made a lasting impression on his pubescent soul. But doesn’t Scorsese realize that more than half of the direc- tors in his personal Pantheon were repeatedly snubbed by the philistine
labored, over-inflated cross-cultural Catholic history drama set in the 17th Century. Why Scorsese still craves acceptance, to say nothing of the Lau- rel of Immortality, is a question only he can answer. A pair of fledgling Jesuit priests,
Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Garrpe (Adam Driver), embark on a mission to Japan, hoping to rescue their absentee mentor, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson). If Scorsese’s army of two is to perish, the Church in that part of the world dies with them. When they’re not witnessing unspeakable acts of human suffer-
Silence: Liam Neeson looks pained (or is it more pained) in Scorsese’s answer to The Passion of the Christ.
ing, the duo spend much of their time having their faith put to the test. When the plot slows down — as it is frequently prone to do — scenes of torture become as perfunctory as a Luger to a Jew’s temple in the equally lumpily structured Schindler’s List. A master of smuggling in refer-
ences to cinema past, this time the homages — what few there are of them — stick out like a John Wayne stunt double. Even if you’ve never seen Otto Preminger’s The Cardinal, you’re bound to detect a tribute to something lurking in the overhead shot of Gar- field, Driver, and Ciarán Hinds walk-
ing through the churchyard. There is no room for beauty
amidst the evil. The deliberate pace and desaturated tones being what they are, one wonders why he didn’t just film in black-and-white. It couldn’t possibly have acted as more of an audi- ence deterrent than an adaptation of
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