Silence

Finally, after many years of waiting and hearsay, I was able to see Martin Scorsese's Silence on Netflix.  It's unfortunate, because this legendary passion project from the renowned director wasn't given a proper release (and lost over $20 million dollars as a result) and consequently didn't come to my home state of Alabama.  I only recently got to see it.  It was worth the wait, but at the same time, quite an ordeal to watch.  It's really the Scorsese film to end all Scorsese films.  The relationship of the Jesuit missionaries to the Japanese villagers, and to their Buddhist overlords, is given very careful attention, and it's never entirely clear, so careful is Scorsese's balanced directorial hand, whose side the director is on.  If not for some public statements made by Scorsese, I'm not sure I would be entirely sure that Scorsese is, in fact, against the Jesuit intervention.  We as viewers inhabit Andrew Garfield's character's perspective pretty completely, and we feel and empathize with his pain during the more trying parts of the film.  For a film goer, the film is a challenge, but it also is absorbing, gorgeously shot, and well-worth seeing.  Check it out.