"Silence" (2016) Movie Dismemberment

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:02]Hello everyone. Today we are dismembering Silence by Martin Scorsese or as I like to call it gaslighting bonanza. Silence is a beautiful movie with one glaring flaw. I will comment on the story and then the major theme of the movie, but if you haven't seen the movie I won't say what it is. Spoilers ahead. Would I be able to make a better Christian movie? Absolutely yes. Would I be able to create a more beautiful movie? Heck no. I know my limits.

[00:00:32]Also, a big shout out to this guy who kept asking me to make this. Today his wish comes true. This is probably one of the longest standing video requests on this entire channel.

[00:00:44]Oh, and if you'd like to support the channel, check the description for crowdfunding platforms as well as the merch store on Selfy.

[00:00:51]Let us begin.

[00:00:53]The movie starts off with Father Ferreira witnessing the martyrdom of friars in Japan in the 17th century. We then go to Rome where a letter of his is read to the members of his order.

[00:01:04]Rodriguez, portrayed by Andrew Garfield, and Garupe, portrayed by Adam Driver. I have a confession to make. This is the first film where I saw Adam Driver and influenced by the theme of the movie, I thought that he was Japanese. I'm not the brightest light bulb in the candlestick.

[00:01:21]The letter describes the torments of Christians in Japan. Sadly, the letter which reached Rome after a number of years is followed by troubling news.

[00:01:29]Ferreira has renounced God publicly and is following the customs of the Japanese.

[00:01:34]The two priests volunteer to be sent to both locate Ferreira and to minister to the community of secret Christians that have been left without priests.

[00:01:42]They get to Macau and there they are introduced to a Japanese man, Kichijiro, who can smuggle them into Japan.

[00:01:49]The elder of a Christian village mentions an inquisitor who is rooting out Christians wherever he finds them.

[00:01:54]While meeting Christians from another village, the priests are informed that Kichijiro used to be a Christian, but was forced to apostatize. His family was murdered as a result.

[00:02:04]Back in Tomogi, the Inquisitor arrives and four prisoners from the village and Kichijiro trample on fumie, a religious icon used to test who is a Christian.

[00:02:13]However, all of them, with the exception of Kichijiro, can't force themselves to spit on a crucifix. They are brutally executed by being tied to a cross and left to the tide.

[00:02:23]In order not to cause further problems for the villagers, the two priests go to two different islands.

[00:02:29]Rodriguez finds Kichijiro, who promptly betrays him to the authorities.

[00:02:34]The kindly elderly man who persecuted the villagers earlier sits down and has a little chat with Rodriguez.

[00:02:40]By the way, I have to say, if you remove all the seriousness from this man, or remove all the wackiness from Kamek, you'd get the same person.

[00:02:50]Rodriguez is taken behind bars and there he meets the interpreter. The interpreter, a Buddhist, tries to convince Rodriguez to apostatize.

[00:02:58]He also knows Father Ferreira, who took up a Japanese name and a Japanese wife.

[00:03:03]The priest is then taken to the prison in the governor's palace, where he ministers to other Christians.

[00:03:09]Then he's taken to a trial, where the governor interrogates him about his faith.

[00:03:14]Rodriguez asks to be taken to the Inquisitor, but it turns out that the seemingly kindly old man is the Inquisitor. All Christians save Rodriguez are taken to the fumie test.

[00:03:24]They have to trample on an icon.

[00:03:27]The judge uses all the classic tropes of Christian persecutors. I don't really care about it. This is just a formality.

[00:03:34]You don't have to be sincere about it.

[00:03:36]It's just a picture. It's a simple moment that will set you free. All of them refuse to do it and they are taken to the prison, save one man who is promptly executed.

[00:03:45]The judge then demonstrates just how easy and painless it is to apostatize.

[00:03:50]He takes out Kichijiro again, who steps on the icon, again, and is set free.

[00:03:56]Rodriguez is taken to the Inquisitor again, and they discuss their differences.

[00:04:00]The priest sees Christianity strictly through the lens of the Gospel, the Inquisitor as an outside interference, even though he personally does not harbor the hateful opinion of the religion as some of the other Japanese.

[00:04:12]Rodriguez is taken to a beach. From a distance, he sees Father Garupe with other prisoners.

[00:04:18]In order for them to be let go, Garupe must betray his faith. However, he remains faithful to the end, losing his life as he's trying to save other martyrs from drowning.

[00:04:28]Rodriguez is then finally taken to meet Ferreira. He apostatized in order to save others from the pit, which is essentially being upside down in excrement with an incision on the side of your head causing blood loss and preventing going unconscious. Ferreira tries to make Rodriguez apostatize while having some rather insane claims that Christianity doesn't take root in Japan, that the Japanese mind cannot comprehend the abstract God of Christianity, that all of the supposedly Christian martyrs worship the sun based on the problematic translation of the Latin Vir Dei Os, and so on. Needless to say, these are all lies.

[00:05:05]Rodriguez is taken to the pit where Christians who supposedly apostatized already are being tortured. Ferreira tells the priest that he needs to take the ultimate sacrifice a priest can do for the love of his people and spare them further suffering by apostatizing himself.

[00:05:20]Rodriguez hears a voice, supposedly from Christ, telling him to step on the icon.

[00:05:26]He does so, and the Christians are freed from their torments.

[00:05:31]Next, we see both former priests working for Japanese, checking imported artifacts whether they're secret Christian shrines.

[00:05:38]Rodriguez is given a Japanese name and a Japanese wife. Once he dies, he's given a Buddhist funeral and a new posthumous Buddhist name. His wife is the only one allowed to see his body, placing a tiny ceremonial statuette in his hands. As Rodriguez's body burns, we see a small carved cross, no doubt a place there by his wife, and initially given to him by the elder when the priest came to Japan.

[00:06:03]So, that is the plot. I need to emphasize that every major question or objection you might have about the issues in this movie is probably addressed by some character at some point. This movie is beautiful. If it portrayed a fictional religion, I'd agree with it. But alas, no movie is an island, and this movie squares rather poorly with the God and religion it tries to depict. One of the central points of the movie is is it okay to apostatize to save others? Let us go back to the time of the church when the Roman persecutions finally ceased. The church had to decide what to do with the three kinds of apostates, or as they were called, lapsi. Without going into too much detail, the lapsi were separated into categories.

[00:06:47]Those who offered sacrifices to pagan gods, whether by slaughtering animals or offering incense. Those who turned in the holy scriptures, sacred vessels, or their own brothers and sisters in faith to the authorities.

[00:06:58]And finally, those who bribed the authorities to obtain certificates claiming they had offered sacrifices without actually having done so. These were given different penances, ranging from absolution and Eucharist at the very end of their life to being barred from communion for 2 years.

[00:07:14]While there is no category as such of those who apostatized to save others from torture, I assume that they would have been treated quite leniently.

[00:07:23]This is more to the fact that this kind of torture does not feature prominently in the lives of the martyrs. For the most part, it does not seem that Romans did that. However, we see precisely these kinds of threats in the life of Saint Zlata of Magala. Ottoman Turks threatened the entire family of Saint Zlata if she didn't convert to Islam.

[00:07:40]She remained steadfast in her faith.

[00:07:42]Turks brutally tortured her, finally murdering her, but they did not torture her family in the end.

[00:07:49]Christ says that for his sake we should hate our mother and our father.

[00:07:53]This is precisely what he means by this.

[00:07:55]If we love Christ, we gain everything, our families included. But if we deny Christ, we lose everything. How can we truly love our families if we deny the creator of families, the creator of their souls?

[00:08:09]The film tries to convince us that Rodriguez has remained a secret Christian, as shown by him holding a cross during his cremation. But what is this Christianity of his? He turned on his own. He prevented the same religion he supposedly holds to be spread in Japan. As the Bible says, faith without works is dead. Here we see far more than mere absence of works. We see him actively undoing all the good work done so far, whether by him or by others.

[00:08:40]Never negotiating with a terrorist is a fine policy. If you negotiate with a terrorist, it only emboldens them to do further acts of terror. Demons are the supreme terrorists, and the split second you accept to play the game of deny Christ or I'll torture these people, you already lost. Our faith in Christ should be absolutely non-negotiable. When a demon-infested torturer brings up his idea to torture others if you remain steadfast, he's trying to convince you that you're the one who's making the decision. That is a lie. The torturer is in fact making the decision to kill or not kill people. You are forced into a trolley problem that isn't a trolley problem to begin with.

[00:09:24]You only lose your soul when you try to imagine it as such. This is why I call this movie a gaslighting bonanza. The sole thing the inquisitor, the interpreter, and Ferreira try to do in this movie is to convince Rodriguez that it is his choice that is causing people pain.

[00:09:40]Whether people who are being threatened are Christians or were Christians or were never Christians to begin with shouldn't influence our final decision in the slightest.

[00:09:49]I'm not a grandstanding. I do not know what I would do in such a situation. I know what I should do, but how I'd act there and then, I do not know. All the characters in this movie are fascinating. Rodriguez, who is full of faith, but his little compromises undermined the entire foundation of his faith. Very early on in the movie, Rodriguez tells Christians to trample on fumie. He did not apostatize when he does that personally. He apostatized long before.

[00:10:21]Garoupe has a short fuse, dislikes Japan and its people, yet is found to be a true martyr.

[00:10:28]Kichijiro is someone a lot of us religious folk could identify with. With all of us constantly repenting of the same sins over and over again.

[00:10:37]I even like the inquisitor. He's the type who believes in Buddhism, in Christianity, in human rights, all the good stuff, but alas, he must serve his one true God, his own country. You can substitute country for any other idol for which we are willing to deny our highest ideals.

[00:10:54]Rodriguez says that he feels God many times in this movie.

[00:10:58]God is only supposedly silent in the times of torments.

[00:11:02]God is not silent. Even at the worst end of our lives, this is not where the story ends, but at our resurrection, which draws its very power from Christ's own glorious arising from the dead.

[00:11:15]If you stopped reading The Lord of the Rings at the moment of Gandalf's death, would you go around saying that Tolkien ended Gandalf's life quite cruelly? Hmm?

[00:11:24]Let us talk about prelest. Prelest is a spiritual delusion. Rodriguez is constantly identifying with Christ to the point of his own undoing. While it is clear that he's getting progressively more insane from witnessing all the horrors, Rodrigues' prayer list is such that he imagines Christ allowing him to trample the fumie.

[00:11:45]When you become Christ, it becomes far too easy to absolve yourself or to supposedly save others.

[00:11:52]The interpreter presents himself as a Buddhist, but he's completely in for some rather non-Buddhistic things like hanging people upside down in excrement until their blood drains out. Let us not deceive ourselves that this type of person is foreign to Christianity. They might as well believe in religious teachings, but when it comes to their practical application, they are completely secular justifying murder, torture, or witch burning.

[00:12:18]For all of you history buffs out there, read on Kakure Kirishitan or hidden Christians of Japan. Their history is quite fascinating.

[00:12:27]This movie is a treasure trove for a Christian analysis. The character of Kichijiro especially. A video essay could be made about his character.

[00:12:36]Sadly, my time in this plane of existence is limited.

[00:12:39]Watch the movie and come to your own conclusions. I'm certain that the movie comes from the place of honesty, from Martin Scorsese's struggles with his own Catholic faith. Any religious person of some experience will find a lot of temptations in this movie very relatable. One final thing.

[00:12:56]Despite literally everything that I said in this video, it is easy to judge from a comfy chair people who buckled under absolutely horrific torture. We must never put ourselves on God's throne and declare them damned or as this movie clearly tries to do as saved.

[00:13:14]Silence.

[00:13:16]God is supposedly silent in this movie.

[00:13:20]Devil, on the other hand, is not.

[00:13:23]If you'd like to see other Christian movie that I liked but is nowhere close in archery to this one. Watch my movie Dismemberment of Nefarious next. Bye.