Chinmoku (1971) Silence - Eureka! MOC Remaster

Adapted from the renowned novel by Shusaku Endo, Masahiro Shinoda’s 1971 film Silence (Chinmoku, co-written with Endo) explores the violent cultural conflict amid the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in seventeenth-century Japan. Shinoda’s excellent direction — coupled with a pensive score by the legendary Toru Takemitsu — gives cinematic expression to inner spiritual paradox, and imbues with religious mystery a landscape that seems already sentient with wind, rain, and light.


Two Portuguese priests disembark upon an anonymous Japanese shore. Under cover of nightfall, they seek to infiltrate those Christian sects driven underground by a ruthless magistracy, and re-establish the foothold of the Church on the isolated island-nation. Soon, however, the priests find themselves drawn into the mire of persecution, and gradually learn the truth behind the ominous disappearance of another Catholic missionary decades earlier…


By way of a heavily made-up and polyglot Tetsuro Tanba (Assassination, Kwaidan, Samurai Spy), Silence builds toward a revelation that approaches the impact of Colonel Kurtz’s entrance in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (or Marlon Brando’s take on Kurtz in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now). Rendered in a tender colour palette courtesy of master cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Yojimbo, Ugetsu Monogatari), Silence unearths lies and beauty at the intersection of religion and Japanese society. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present for the first time on DVD in the UK Masahiro Shinoda’s Silence — based upon the same novel that has intrigued American filmmaker Martin Scorsese for decades, and spurred his own work on a film adaptation of the source material.


Seeing this clash of cultures in feudal Japan, one cannot help but be reminded of the 80's television series Shogun, although this film precedes that series by over a decade. The setting is 16th century Japan, a time in which Christianity has been banned and the worshipping of the Christian God an offence punishable by torture and death. The religion itself first took root as an import from Portugal some years earlier, when missionaries and their work tolerated as harmless. But when the converted Christians put obedience to their God above that to their Shogun, this collective insubordination was seen as a threat, hence the 1587 and 1597 banning orders issued by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who executed 26 Franciscan missionaries as a warning to others who might follow in their footsteps. Followers of the Christian religion were driven underground, and by 1638 Christianity was all but extinct in Japan.


Silence opens during this period of religious oppression, as two Portuguese Christian missionaries – Fathers Rodriguez (David Lampson) and Garrpe (Don Kenny) – arrive somewhere on the shore of what is probably Kyushu (it's never clearly identified) under the cover of darkness. They are met by a small group of Japanese Christians, who welcome their patronage and dedicate themselves to keeping the presence of the pair on Japanese soil a secret. As the persecution of the Christian locals continues and the hunt for the missionaries intensifies, Garrpe and Rodriguez become separated and the latter reluctantly falls in with scruffy Kichijiro, the only one of the village Christians to submit to pressure from the authorities and denigrate the fumi-e, a plaque bearing sacred Christian imagery designed specifically to expose the religion's followers by requiring them to step or spit on it. His subsequent collaboration leads to the arrest of Rodriguez, and while the Padre debates his fate and beliefs with his captors, Kichijiro struggles with his guilt and a desire for redemption.


That the story is told largely from a Christian viewpoint is unusual for Japanese cinema, but not so strange given that the screenplay was co-written by renowned Japanese scholar and devout Catholic Shusaku Endo, based on his own widely respected novel. Its parable structure casts the bearded and bedraggled Father Rodriguez as Jesus, complete with loyal followers, a wilderness wandering, an oppressive ruling government, a walk through hostile crowds with his arms tied to crossbeam, and a Judas figure in the shape of Kichijiro, who trades Rodriguez in for 300 pieces of silver, an inflationary build on the 30 of his infamous forebear. Functioning primarily as a story of the testing of Christian faith and the reaction of the Japanese authorities of the time to the perceived threat it represented, the film also questions whether Christianity could ever really take hold in Japan, though the suggestion is that without such rigid repression it may have achieved a more widespread acceptance.


The concept of a foreign religion as an alien and potentially disruptive force is not sidestepped here and becomes the subject of arresting debate between Rodriguez and his captor Inoue. Both men are shown to be intransigent in their views, but Rodriguez's increasingly self-righteousness indignation make it disarmingly easy to sympathise with his unruffled and smiling host. It is in these exchanges that the film touches on the key question of the validity of one version of spiritual truth over another, with the missionaries functioning as disruptive invaders whose word of God is not necessarily any more correct than the one they are seeking to usurp.

They are also hopeless unprepared for the consequences their actions and even presence could have for others. "You selfishly force your own dreams on us," Inoue says to Rodriguez, as those the Padre has come to assist are systematically drowned to prompt him and Garepe to recant their faith. "You never think of the bloodshed you are causing." It's a valid comment that strikes at the very heart of the missionaries' calling and marks an effective dividing line between the devout and those for whom religion itself represents a self-imposed method of intellectual oppression. For many of the more devout Christians, teaching the gospel and the conversion of unbelievers is central to their calling and they do not see national or cultural differences as barriers to this. But for those not sympathetic to the Christian teachings, such actions are equitable to those of an enterprising heroin dealer, using deception to create a market for a product the user has no real need for, but on which they will ultimately become dependent.


This inevitably raises the familiar issue of how we judge the actions and beliefs of cultures other than our own, and one of the very real strengths of Silence is that the criticism comes not from a superior minded outsider but from within, a moral questioning by a Japanese writer and Japanese filmmakers of a troubling aspect their own history. Shinoda never sentimentalises the conflict or Rodriguez's role in it, taking almost an observer's view of events that is repeatedly punctuated by arresting wide shots and telling close-ups, captured in partially desaturated colour by master cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa's arresting cinematography. The soundtrack is also noteworthy, the use of location atmospherics and sometimes hauntingly avant-garde score by Kwaidan and Woman in the Dunes composer Toru Takemitsu having an almost expressionistic quality, an externalisation of the isolation and inner turmoil suffered by Rodriguez as his quest crumbles and the worshippers he came to help are killed.

If what makes a story work lies at least in part in the manner of its telling, then it is here that Silence transcends any barriers that its subject matter may throw up. Strip the film of its religious clothing and it becomes a story of the repression of freedom of speech and thought, of ideas considered contrary or even dangerous to those of the state and the power that can be exercised to suppress them. This reading is particularly evident in the powerful final scenes, which do not play to expectations and are open to multiple interpretations, none of which make for particularly comfortable viewing, whatever your beliefs may be.



This rip, as with the original DVD, contains embedded Japanese subtitles during the English-spoken scenes.
Please discard the srt included with the film, and use the 'corrected subtitle' link (just a few minor corrections made - now perfect).
Many thanks to CerealRipper for the original DVD9. This rip will fit exactly onto one third of a single-layer DVD.