#none draw power directly from the gods and none are particularly pious

[12pt-times-new-roman]

c3e59

let's go back in tiiiiime

"Where are we?" "Where's everybody else?" "Where's Imogen?"

This area is rife with not just volcanic activity, but with seismic activity as well, and Ruidus is to the south.

Laudna identifies a handful of places that match this description: the Truskan Vale (near Kamordah), the Panagrip Sands (to the far east of Marquet), and the Spectrum Gorge in the middle of Issylra.

Orym to Caleb, via sending stone: "Um... Caleb Widogast? Are you alright? Where are you? Not sure we're even in Marquet anymore. Please respond." He's met with a feedback loop and static.

Orym to Dorian, vis sending stone: "Dorian? Can you hear me? Uh... what's the sky look like where you are? Tell me you're okay." Same thing.

They crest a ridge of the gorge, and beyond, there's a dense forest, a cluster of growth affixed to the mineral-rich earth. Orym, with a passive perception of 31, sees movement — 

AIMEE!!!!

She's a dwarf with long blond hair, covered in tattoos — two stand out, one of a banner heart that says "me" instead of "mom," and one with a large cursive D. She's wearing earring hoops that say "fuck off." A corset, bejeweled boots, a massive gold belt buckle, carrying a whip and a sickle.

I'm calling it right now, this woman is going to romance Laudna and Ashton.

An hour ago, she was in Tal'dorei looking for her ex. She almost found him when she heard Ludinus' voice, saw white light, then appeared in this forest.

Mona is a barbarian/rogue (who rolled excellent stats btw).

From the top, they can see that the gorge is a massive canyon at least two miles long. Ruidus is to the southwest of them. An extremely overgrown and vibrant forest surrounds the canyon, and there's a river nearby.

Orym can see another gathering of leylines to the northeast — another nexus point, miles off. Loosely in that direction, he can see a township, and beyond that, a massive mountain range with one singular mountain taller than any he's ever seen — the Heaven's Stair. The entire western side of his vision is taken up by a mountain range that looks so foreboding and ominous that he doesn't even want to go near it. To the south, ocean.

Traveling to the northeast, they encounter a fire and send Pate to scout. (Friendly reminder that Pate uses the stat block of an imp, so he can turn invisible at will.) At the fire, there's a cart, a reindeer-looking beast of burden, and a humanoid figure warming their hands.

Utkarsh Ambudkar is an actor best known for his roles in Pitch Perfect and Avatar: the Last Airbender.

Bor'dor is a half-elf "built like a coat hanger." 6'4 but hunched over, delicate fingers, no scars or tattoos. Brown skin with shades of green and gold, unkempt hair, and large gold-amber eyes. A face that carries the resting expression of "what the fuck is going on?" No armor, a green cloak, leather shoes, and a crossbow.

He shoots a 5th-level lightning bolt at Mona, then casts cure wounds at second level. He's a divine soul sorcerer!

He was in the Cyrios Mountains on Wildemount (near Pride's Call) with his sheep — his family raises sheep and sheepdogs — and caring for his sick brother. Then he felt a humming, heard a voice and a droning, a pain in his forehead — then he got teleported here, along with his cart.

And apparently he just... spontaneously gained 9 levels in sorcerer over the course of the hours he's been here. Which, if he's a divine soul sorcerer, is super fucking concerning considering what we know about the gods giving large amounts of power to their followers from EXU: Calamity.

Mona's whip is a whip of warning, which gives her advantage on initiative rolls. Also, creatures within 30 feet of her cannot be surprised, and if they're sleeping naturally and combat starts, they wake up at the start of combat.

Orym spots another figure, walking through the forest, approaching the light and conversation.

EMILY!!

She's a shadar-kai elf with emo girl tattoos with runes instead of song lyrics, but she's dressed in the formal attire of a mage's apprentice. Indoor kid vibes, clothes not meant for adventuring, "coming out of a tense conversation with a book."

She's a Cobalt Soul apprentice!! She's here asking about their "experiences with the apogee solstice."

Her book talks to her. She was sent by the Cobalt Soul, but with a sentient book chaperone. It's a tome with black and brown leather and silver runes, with a scrunched face roughly pressed into the front. Denios was trapped in a book during a rivalry, the Cobalt Soul got their hands on it, and now he's a chaperone.

The Cobalt Soul didn't know where she was gonna end up, but they sent her through a teleport spell hoping for a metropolis — and ended up here. So this confirms that teleport works, but there's no guarantee where you're gonna end up.

Prism was stepping outside the library to prepare for her teleportation when she heard Ludinus, saw a flash, and ended up here.

The Soul knew that the apogee solstice would be a "cataclysmic event." They scrounged up everyone they could and dispatched them to try to figure out what's happening.

The sentient book is also her spellbook, so she's stuck with him.

It sounds like Prism is an order of scribes wizard? That would make sense for the Cobalt Soul.

Mona's "real" name is Deni$e. Her nails are incredibly sharp stilettos. Her demeanor reminds me a lot of Keg.

More rustling in the bushes! More people?

Nope! Initiative at the end of the break.

Prism has a raven familiar she calls "mother." She also invokes the spirit of her spellbook, confirming that she's an Order of Scribes wizard.

Denise has at least 3 levels in rogue, because her sneak attack is 2d6, and at least 2 levels in barbarian, because she has reckless attack.

Gods, I forgot how much I love Talisein's descriptions of Ashton's attacks and rage builds. They're all so good.

Oooooh, I've never seen steel wind strike used in a game before! It's a 5th level ranger/wizard spell from Xanithar's that deals 6d10 force damage on a hit to up to 5 creatures within range. Then, regardless of whether it hit or not, the caster can teleport to a space within 5 feet of any of the targets.

Also, yes, rules-as-written a familiar counts as an ally that can proc sneak attack. So if Veth, as an arcane trickster, had taken find familiar, or if Frumpkin was used in this way, she could've gotten sneak attack much more reliably. Personally, I find it strange that familiars can do this while spiritual weapons cannot, but yeah.

I love that Bor'dor, the newly-minted sorcerer who has no idea how to use his magic purposefully, is this party's only source of healing (besides Laudna's wither and bloom, which hardly counts). From that, it seems like this group is much more geared toward social encounters than physical ones,

YO. EMILY. that is a DOPE FUCKING MOVE

The plant swallows Orym, then the book goes in behind him and gets into contact, then Prism casts dimension door through the book on Orym to teleport them out.

THIS is why I absolutely love watching veteran players on Critical Role. People new to the system have their own unique charm to the way they play their characters, but people like Emily and Aabria who are highly experienced with and aware of D&D 5e know to make incredibly creative moves like that.

And at the same time, Utkarsh (and guests new to 5e) pushes the limits of the rules, because they're not familiar with those rules, to a point that they come up with wildly creative plays based on what knowledge they do have of the rules-as-written that end up being clutch moves.

Combat ends.

Prism's raven is named after both her own mother and the Matron of Ravens, because the latter is prominent in the Shadowfell.

Prism is "really new to spellcasting," despite being a 9th-level wizard who is therefore capable of casting things like contact other plane, create spelljamming helm, legend lore, and teleportation circle. tbh this is such a cool take on wizards -- someone who's never tested their spells in combat situations, but who's confident in their own ability with those spells in more innocuous circumstances, due to their expansive study and lack of practical experience.

Also, Prism knows exactly who Ludinus Da'leth is, though she's never interacted with him directly, because of his leadership of the Cerberus Assembly.

"We don't leave people behind. That's the rule. You do not leave people the fuck behind." I love that this has become the center of Ashton's philosophy, because it makes so much sense. They were left behind, left for dead, and a single person stayed by their side, helped them, saved them. So of course they are going to be that person for someone else. Of course they would rather be the Milo, of course they'd rather try in vain to save someone instead of leaving them behind and subjecting them to the same pain and isolation that they themself felt.

Also, again, Emily is using the same logic for Prism as Aabria did for Laerryn. Maybe it's just because we've never really had a proper elf PC (or a player-character who had the trance ability), but this is just such a cool take on trance...... I love it.

Ahhh, so Prism doesn't necessarily believe the gods should die but she does believe that they might deserve to be usurped by mortals ascending to godhood like the Raven Queen. With a skill check, Prism's truthful reason is that she's feeling excited to be out of the library. She thought she was going to freak out, but she didn't, and she's excited by that -- she feels like she could smoke a cigarette in a single drag, she feels that rush of adrenalin. It's like when Caleb said in C2 that they were all addicts to the thrill of battle, the adrenalin of purpose.

Bor'dor doesn't remember his mother very well, and he hasn't seen her in a very long time. He believes that his magic comes from the love of his mother, and he's clinging to that. He and Prism take the first watch, and bond over their ability to trance.

Yep, Prism is 100% an order of scribes wizard. Manifest Mind is a 6th level ability of that subclass.

Ashton panicked, down in the mines. They thought they'd won, they thought Laudna had won, and they think they made some bad calls. Laudna says that "we're a bunch of dumb-fucks, going up against a 500-year-old wizard, so..." And Ashton reassures her that they're gonna get their people. They're gonna get Prism, Bor'dor, and Deni$e to where they need to go, then they're gonna find Imogen. "If they went to space, then we'll go to space... if she got vaporized, we'll bring her back. This is what we do. We bring everybody back. There is no failure in this, and we're going to figure it out because it's what matters. I have-- whatever broken thing that's in my head, that means that anything's possible now, that's what I've decided. We brought you back, and we can do it again... sure, we're not enough to save the world, but we are more than enough to bring everybody back... we can't save the world, but we can save our people. We're going to."

I never really got to know Percy, I liked Molly, I loved Caduceus... but I want to fucking study Ashton like a bug under a microscope, I want to turn them around in my brain like a microwave. They are fascinating,

Deni$e and Orym take the last watch. Deni$e knows Shaun Gilmore! She went to Emon looking for him specifically. She also knows Dariax, "that piece of shit." She knows Orym from wanted posters all over Emon -- the Nameless Ones have put up wanted posters for all of the Crown Keepers.

Dariax has a dumptruck ass, canon.

DARIAX IS THE EX DENI$E WAS LOOKING FOR

And the Nameless Ones were going after her because they were looking for what Dariax stole, and as soon as she saw him months later, she got teleported here.

Orym has flashes of Keyleth, Will, the horrors they've witnessed. It permeates this light conversation, his entire existence. He drinks, heavier than we've seen him drink the entire campaign. "I just... I just don't think I've ever felt so small."

Prism doesn't know sending, but if she can find a scroll or a copy of a spell, she can transcribe it into her spellbook very quickly. She wants to find a library or some discarded spellbooks so she can help, so she can cast sending.

As an interesting note, this is also an Order of Scribes ability! Usually, it takes 2 hours per spell level for a wizard to transcribe a spell, but for an Order of Scribes wizard it takes two minutes per spell level.

"That mountain to the north is the Ascendant Bridge, the tallest mountain in Exandria... it's visible as far away as Vasselheim. It's believed to be where the gods first arrived in the world." The party is within a gorge of Othanzia, the region in which Vasselheim, the dawn of all civilization, sits.

The party can still see Ruidus, even in the early daylight. They can see townships around -- they have options scattered in every direction.

[mrmichaelchadler]

Bright Wall/Dark Room April 2019: Religious Cinema for Non-Believers: Scorsese's Silence

We are pleased to offer an excerpt from the April issue of the online magazine, Bright Wall/Dark Room. Their latest issue is about long movies (150 minutes or more). In addition to Joel Mayward's essay below on Martin Scorsese's "Silence," the issue also includes new essays on "Magnolia," "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King," "Funny People," "Inherent Vice," "Star!", "The Last Emperor," "Laurence Anyways," "Sátántangó," "The Emigrants," and more. 

You can read our previous excerpts from the magazine by clicking here. To subscribe to Bright Wall/Dark Room, or look at their most recent essays, click here.

In the beginning, there is only darkness. Crickets chirp and cicadas buzz. There is some small comfort in the auditory, a living hum in the blackness and blindness. Through the void, the sounds of nature build and crescendo, peaking to an almost unbearable cacophony until…

Silence.

Everything is in a fog. Steam and smoke swirl in the blue-grey as our eyes adjust and hints of a human silhouette come into view. A powerful warrior stands before us; our eyes adjust further, and we realize he is adjacent to a type of wooden altar, upon which lie two ambiguous spheres. As we get our visual bearings, we recognize in horror what we are seeing: severed human heads.

The clouds of steam continue to billow through a wide shot of the craggy cliffs, obscuring our view of the various human figures dotting the foreign landscape of patchy grass and bubbling pools. A line of guards marches slowly into view; there follows a patient dissolve, nearly imperceptible in the mist. Then, a man’s back is before us, a prisoner priest helplessly witnessing a cadre of Japanese warriors torture five Portuguese Jesuit missionaries. They pour boiling water from the steaming hot springs onto the Christians’ exposed skin. We hear a voice, a narrated letter sent from the captured priest to any listening followers of Christ beyond Japan. The hopeful epistolary narration—“We only grow stronger in His love”—is a stark contrast to the image of the quivering Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson) in the mud, on his knees out of surrender and despair.

So begins Martin Scorsese’s Silence, an adaptation of Shūsaku Endō’s 1966 novel of the same title and Scorsese’s long-awaited (and underappreciated) passion project. The third of Scorsese’s unofficial trilogy about crises of faith following The Last Temptation of Christ and Kundun, Silence is certainly religious cinema, but it is not a “faith-based film,” nor in the transcendental style of his Last Temptation collaborator, Paul Schrader. It is about entering into the cloud of unknowing, the dark night of the soul, listening to the silence of God and waiting eternally for a response. It is a long movie and a movie of longing. It is both prayerful and profane. In the words of philosopher Richard Kearney, Silence is anatheistic—it is about the lingering question of God after you no longer believe in God, a faith beyond faith. The ana- prefix indicates an afterward, a return, not a synthesis of theism and atheism but a radical openness beyond the binary, what Jacques Derrida calls “religion without religion.” In other words, Silence is religious cinema for our secular age.

In our post-postmodern era, there is a notable rise of the religious “nones” even as there is also a “religious turn” in Western academia and the public sphere—as a society, we are becoming both more and less religious all at once. The 2016 presidential election is indicative of this divided phenomenon as 81% of white American evangelicals voted for Trump, while seven in 10 religious “nones” voted for Clinton. It was not only a crisis of politics, it was also a crisis of faith, particularly as many non-rightwing evangelicals (now “exvangelicals”) found themselves without a clear religious identity, exiles wandering in a secularized religious landscape.

Merely weeks after the election, Scorsese’s Silence quietly slipped into North American theaters with very little notice. Despite near-universal critical acclaim, audiences just didn’t turn out for it; with its $46 million budget, Silence grossed a meager $7.1 million domestically. Where Last Temptation provoked angry protests and boycotts from church groups, Silence elicited mostly muted indifference. Religious audiences may have been uneasy about the film’s doctrinal ambiguities and disturbing violence, while non-believing audiences perhaps couldn’t believe in the religious traditions and tribulations (especially why stepping on the fumi-e would be a such big deal to a priest). Silence appeared too pious for non-believers and too sacrilegious for believers. 

But this is precisely how Scorsese has been operating for his entire career as a filmmaker. The opening shot of his first feature film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, is a close-up of a statue of the Madonna and Child sitting in a New York apartment kitchen, and Scorsese once confessed, “My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else.” Even as his cinematic style and personal theology have developed and matured over the decades, Scorsese has always been breaking down the transcendent-immanent divide in his underlying theological queries and quest for redemption, uniting the sacred and profane, the religious and secular. He says it himself in Mean Streets: “You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets.” Or in the brothels, the casinos, the boxing rings, the prisons—even in 17th-century Japan.

*

Ferreira’s letter reaches the ears of two young priests, Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garupe (Adam Driver), who wish to go to Japan to find their mentor and continue the good work of spreading the gospel of Christianity. They debate the merits and plausibility of this quest with Father Valignano (Ciarán Hinds), who remains reluctant. There are rumors that Ferreira has apostatized and forsaken the faith, that the seed of Christianity cannot take root in this “swamp” of a country, as Ferreira later describes it. This is enough to make Valignano doubt the validity of any more missions. But the idealist young priests cannot give up on their spiritual father. They are so sure, so certain of God’s providence in the matter. With romantic missionary zeal, Rodrigues and Garupe convince Father Valignano to send them to Japan.

There follows an impressive overhead fisheye shot of the three priests descending a flight of white marble stairs as they discuss their mission. In theologically-laden cinematic terminology, this is a “God’s eye view,” a removed above-it-all vantage point looking directly downward, as if an invisible divine presence were watching the characters and actions below. Scorsese absolutely loves this shot—it’s present in every film he’s ever made, perhaps as a silent tribute to his own Roman Catholic upbringing and earlier seminarian longings. Yet I think it’s more than mere auteurist technique—Scorsese is subtly drawing our attention to the transcendent via his cinematography, the Spirit hovering over the waters of our chaotic world. Whether it is Travis Bickle or Henry Hill or Billy Costigan or Jordan Belfort, Scorsese has always been asking through his movies: Is there a God silently watching us? Is there any moral judge or divine comfort beyond this mortal coil? It’s as if cinema is Scorsese’s mode of theological inquiry—he is doing theology via his movies, not just depicting it. In an interview with Deadline about Silence, Scorsese says the following about this theological drive:

“Questions, answers, loss of the answer again and more questions, and this is what really interests me. Yes, the Cinema and the people in my life and my family are most important, but ultimately as you get older, there’s got to be more. Much, much more. The very nature of secularism right now is really fascinating to me, but at the same time do you wipe away what could be more enriching in your life, which is an appreciation or some sort of search for that which is spiritual and transcends?”

There is a both-and approach to the religious and secular with Scorsese, this blurring of categories as he searches for God while acknowledging that the faith of his childhood is gone. He continues: “There are no answers. We all know that. You try to live in the grace that you can. But there are no answers, but the point is, you keep looking.”

You keep looking. This is precisely what Scorsese’s camera does in Silence. It continues to look into the lives (and deaths) of 17th-century Jesuit priests and Japanese Kirishitans, peering directly into the in-between space of belief and doubt. In the sacred-secular divide, Scorsese makes his home within the hyphen.

*

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.

 –James 1:5-6

Many significant moments in Silence occur on beaches, the meeting of sand and sea, the liminal space between the security of dry ground and the relentless undulation of the waves. The biblical book of James describes the latter as akin to doubt, that tumultuous spiritual anxiety which keeps us up at night, wondering. Scorsese the hyphen-dweller places significant narrative crises in Silence on these shorelines, where the solidity of belief is repeatedly washed over by liquid uncertainty.

When Rodrigues and Garupe arrive on the shores of Japan, they initially take shelter in a cave as they wait for Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozuka), an apostate and the priests’ cowardly Japanese host. This same seaside cave frames the Japanese soldiers and the inquisitor Inoue (Issei Ogata) as they bear witness to the deaths of three Kirishitans hung on crosses in the pounding surf. The cinematic image of the ocean crucifixion is paradoxically horrific and beautiful, the painterly framing honoring these martyrs even as we wonder whether anything is worth this cost. The villagers and priests silently bear witness as the believers’ lives slip away due to exposure to the wind and waves; the Japanese burn the bodies on a pyre, the smoke rising like that from a religious altar. We learn that Kichijiro’s family came to a similar fate on the edge of the sea, burned alive as he publicly recanted.

Rodrigues and Garupe choose to separate in order to hide from the Japanese authorities and possibly spare the villagers from further persecution. Traveling by boat, Rodrigues arrives at Kichijiro’s home village, Gotō, to find it derelict and deserted. Climbing from the boat into the waves, the sounds of nature—the same sounds as the opening title sequence—suddenly break through and fill the soundscape as Rodrigues makes his way to shore. In a striking image, Rodrigues is centered in the frame as he (and we) take in the view of the silent town, overrun with stray cats. As Rodrigues enters a home to lap up water, the camera slowly wanders out an open window in a shot echoing Taxi Driver’s phone call scene with the empty hallway, signifying the abject loneliness of the priest. There is no one listening. Despondent, the priest wonders what we, too, wonder: What am I doing here?

*

Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 

–1 Kings 19:11-12

Wandering in the misty mountains of Japan, Rodrigues is akin to the prophet Elijah in the wilderness, a believer experiencing the pangs of unbelief. Curled up under a rocky overhang like Elijah was curled under a desert broom tree, the priest’s faith in his mission and his God is no longer so solid. A series of quick dissolves indicate his fractured psyche as he silently pleads with God: “I pray but I am lost. Or am I just praying to nothing? Nothing, because you are not there?”

But God appears. Or, at least the image of Christ manifests in the muddy river waters (another shoreline) just before Rodrigues is betrayed by Kichijiro to the Japanese inquisitors. In a (quite literally) narcissistic move, the exhausted priest sees a vision of the face of Christ in his own reflection, prompting a maniacal laugh before he is captured. The face of Christ in Silence is an adaptation of a 16th-century painting by El Greco, St. Veronica with the Holy Shroud. Traditionally, Saint Veronica offered the struggling Christ her cloth to wipe his brow as he carried the cross to Calvary; when she received the cloth back, the exact image of his face was miraculously impressed into it. I find the shroud’s parallels to celluloid and cinema striking, how an image is imprinted onto the film, creating new meanings. I love how Scorsese deliberately chose this painting of a cloth—an image of an image—to portray his mediated Christ. Like cinema, it generates remarkable empathy and emotion even as there is always a mediated distance—we are always seeing through someone else’s perspective, a vision of the viewed, an alluring aloofness. The mediated Christ of Silence will not speak in the traditional ways of Biblical epics or like Willem Dafoe’s crazed Jesus in Last Temptation, with drama and fervor, gusto and glory, earthquakes and fire. No, if this Christ speaks—and he will—it will be in the sound of sheer silence.

*

Rodrigues is captured near the exact midway mark of Silence. The film’s second half plays out like an extended courtroom drama as the priest is tried and tested before the inquisitor Inoue and his unnamed translator (Tadanobu Asano). The Japanese make the priest’s life relatively comfortable; though imprisoned, he is allowed to pray the rosary and gather with the Japanese Kirishitans for worship. The wooden cage becomes a confessional, the parallel bars framing the characters’ bodies. In a scene where the Japanese Kirishitans are put forward to step on the fumi-e, the camera remains inside the cage with Rodrigues—we, too, are prisoners watching through the slats, our vision slightly obscured by the vertical divisions which cannot be overcome.

Inoue’s strategy is to compel Rodrigues to recant his faith by torturing the Japanese converts until he does. It is a patient technique, and Scorsese’s pacing and editing incarnate this approach, taking time with the images and ideas presented so that we can truly wrestle with their moral and mortal implications. In yet another shoreline scene, Rodrigues is taken to a beach to witness Garupe from a distance as guards take three prisoner converts and drown them off-shore. Unable to communicate with his fellow priest, Rodrigues (and we) watch helplessly as the emaciated Garupe refuses to apostatize and flings himself into the surf in a desperate attempt to save the victims, drowning in the process. “Terrible business!” the interpreter screams at Rodrigues. “Think about the suffering you have inflicted on these people, just because of your selfish dream of a Christian Japan. Your Deus punishes Japan through you!”

How are we to respond to this? Who is in the wrong: the Japanese inquisitors who torture and kill the Kirishitans and priests, or the European Christians who arrive uninvited and ignore the Japanese cultural heritage in the name of conversion? Why are human beings capable of such cruelty to one another in the name of religion? Why do people suffer and God remains silent? Silence does not offer us simple, black-and-white answers. It demands that we wade into the suffering and sit with it. Yet Rodrigues initially cannot do this—he always has an argument, an answer, a position, a system, a Truth he will clutch tightly in his hands and heart until he is finally able to let go.

*

My ears had heard of you     but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself     and repent in dust and ashes.

–Job 42:5-6

  “Come ahead now. It’s all right. Step on me. I understand your pain. I was born into this world to share men’s pain. I carried this cross for your pain. Your life is with me now. Step.” 

In the silence, we hear the calming voice of Christ speak these words to Rodrigues through the fumi-e. Though uncredited, the voice we hear must be Ciarán Hinds, who earlier portrayed Father Valignano. Scorsese’s choice to have Hinds’ voice speak to Rodrigues (and to us) in this climactic scene creates a remarkable ambiguity and tension. Are we to believe this is the actual voice of God, a figment of Rodrigues’ imagination, or some combination therein? For those who believe the former, isn’t it possible that an emotionally-distraught person is merely hearing voices conjured from his broken psyche? For those who believe the latter, isn’t it possible for a divine person (if such a person could exist) to speak in whatever manner desired, especially if the voice were familiar and brought comfort to the hearer? Are you open to the impossible becoming possible, whether toward belief or unbelief? Silence invites us into this liminal uncertainty, asking us not to disbelieve or believe, but to simply be in this unresolved tension and not speak. Step.

He steps. There is absolute silence as Rodrigues places his foot on the fumi-e and his body collapses in slow motion to the dust. He has seen the face of God fade from view, and he will never be the same again.

As the sound returns and the five Japanese victims are raised from the torture pit, we hear the faint but distinct sound of a rooster crowing, an allusion to the Apostle Peter’s threefold denial of Christ. Years later, after Rodrigues has renounced the Christian faith numerous times over, Silence shows us a conversation between the fallen priest and Kichijiro. The Japanese man whispers, “Padre…Please hear my confession.” Rodrigues initially refuses, but as Kichijiro bows before him in penitence, the sound drops out and we hear the fallen priest’s narrated prayer in a whisper: “Lord, I fought against your silence.”

Suddenly, the voice of Christ breaks through: “I suffered beside you. I was never silent.” There is no face, no fumi-e, no vision. Only a voice.

“I know,” confesses Rodrigues. “But even if God had been silent my whole life”—Rodrigues is now speaking this aloud to Kichijiro, to himself, to God?—“to this very day, everything I do, everything I've done...Speaks of him.” A pause. “It was in the silence that I heard your voice.” Then Rodrigues kneels, his forehead pressed to Kichijiro’s, the two men nearly symmetrical in the frame as the camera lingers on their weeping bodies.

In the final shot of the film, the body of the deceased and apostate Rodrigues burns on a Buddhist pyre, the rising white smoke echoing the misty fog of the opening scene. Beginning in a wide shot of the flames, Scorsese’s camera patiently zooms forward through the fire until it rests on a small crucifix clutched in Rodrigues’ hands, placed there by his Japanese widow. This is one of the only moments in Silence not found in Endo’s novel, which concludes on a much more ambiguous note. Scorsese has included a symbol of belief in his adaptation, perhaps to indicate the priest’s futile existence as a Christian, or possibly as a material witness to the glimmer of faith which is possible for anyone and everyone.

*

On my first viewing of Silence, I identified with Rodrigues. I admired his spiritual and pastoral fervor, his apparent willingness to go to the ends of the earth for his beliefs. Rodrigues sees his story as parallel to Christ’s own Passion. Yet in this I also saw his pride; as Ferreira tells him, “You see Jesus in Gethsemane and believe your trial is the same as his” but the Japanese Kirishitans “would never compare themselves to Jesus.” Rodrigues arrives in Japan with all the right answers, telling the villagers what to do—go find more Christians in other villages!—without listening or learning of their culture and lifestyle. He sees himself as above them; he is a literal white savior on a mission with what he believes is the Truth, capital T. “The truth is universal. That’s why it’s called the truth,” he tells Inoue. I, too, used to be this adamant about having the corner market on the Truth. But what I first saw as conviction I now see as arrogance. To embrace dogmatic belief systems and ideologies—whether religious or secular—and ignore all other possibilities as inherently false is to live a blinkered existence.

On my second viewing of Silence, I identified with Kichijiro, the misfit Japanese Kirishitan who lives in a constant cycle of apostasy and faithfulness. He steps on the fumi-e repeatedly, and with little hesitation; it becomes pathetic, even comical. He follows Rodrigues like the Apostle Peter followed Christ the night he was arrested, lurking and cowering, unwilling to put his life on the line yet unable to pull himself wholly away from the faith. Kichijiro would never draw a parallel between himself and Christ like Rodrigues does; he knows he is too great of a sinner for that. He is humus, Latin for “dirt” or “earth,” our root word for both “humility” and “humiliation.” Yet he returns again, ana, wagering that there is yet grace to be found in this world. I am Kichijiro; I am daily failing forward in my own faith, only certain of my uncertainty as I yearn for possible glimpses of the transcendent.

On my third viewing of Silence, I identified with Scorsese. I was aware of his silent presence throughout the film, his cinematic vision and voice imbuing every scene with a sense of the sacred, the sacramental, the holy. Silence is neither praising nor condemning either the Roman Catholic Church or the Japanese culture, but it is also not neutral or uncaring. It provokes a judgment in its audience; we are not permitted to just sit back, silently watch, and do nothing. Silence invites us into a fictional world and asks us to consider the deepest questions of human existence while recognizing (as Scorsese admits) there are no absolute answers—we simply try to live in the grace that we can. 

In Jesuit spirituality, there is an exercise called imaginative prayer, using one’s imagination to place oneself in a biblical scene in order to more fully enter into communion with the story. Perhaps Silence can be considered an act of cinematic Ignatian contemplation, a sensory imagistic experience of meditative and mediated prayer. Scorsese imbues his film with personal, pastoral care; one might even call it love. Whether you are a staunch believer or a die-hard atheist, Silence will lovingly challenge you to imagine the possibility of Another Way. I believe the post-secular pilgrims of our world—the religious nones, the anatheists, the spiritual misfits—may find a home in the Church of Cinema, with Scorsese as our priest.

from All Content http://bit.ly/2GsW07P