Edited by Brittany Martin
timeout.com/los-angeles/film @britt_m
Film
Breaking his silence
Martin Scorsese opens up about a passion project three decades in the making. By Cath Clarke
SHORTLY AFTER THE release—and controversy—of his film The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988, Martin Scorsese traveled to Japan. As he rode a train through the country, he read Shūsaku Endō’s novel Silence, which follows two priests searching for their missing mentor in Japan in 1639, when Christianity was brutally repressed. The priests are captured by the shogunate and forced to choose between renouncing their faith or watching the executions of their fellow Catholics. The novel resonated deeply with Scorsese, who spent almost 30 years obsessed with adapting it into a film. Now he has finally realized his long-delayed opus with actors Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver as the priests—and even taken it to the Vatican to screen it for the Pope.
Time Out Los Angeles January–March 2017
When you were an altar boy at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in NYC, did you ever imagine that you would meet the Pope? Those were fantasies I never thought could happen. The Church in New York in the 1950s was a refuge for me. You needed to survive with the rough-and-tumble kids, and you needed to be respected. Some got involved in difficult things, really bad
Driver, left, and Garfield
There is a theme in this film of guilt and internal conflict that harks back to your early films. Do you see a thread from Raging Bull’s Jake LaMotta to Father Rodrigues, the priest Andrew Garfield plays in Silence? I think [of LaMotta as] a man who really couldn’t live with himself and could only express himself through violence. Ultimately, he understands that if he’s looking for forgiveness or redemption, he first has to accept himself and then, maybe, forgive himself.
“It’s a matter of making peace, not being at war with yourself all the time.”
And is that process of self-acceptance the same for Father Rodrigues, who struggles to reconcile doing something he finds personally abhorrent, even to protect innocent lives? Yes. I’m drawn to that story. You have to be merciful with yourself. That doesn’t mean being indulgent, but it’s a matter of making peace, not being at war with yourself all the time.
Scorsese on the set of Silence
things. A couple got killed. [St. Patrick’s priest] Father Principe was our mentor in the streets. He had a different take on who we could be.
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What do you think you have learned at this point in your life? That somehow discipline and patience make it a little more tolerable. Learn patience with people—and with yourself, to a certain extent.
à Silence is now playing (
silencemovie.com).
PHOTOGRAPHS: KERRY BROWN
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