By Maria Agnesa Puscasu
The Catholic Church always had something to say about cinema, and films responded vividly. On various occasions, there were real clashes between the two, but reconciliation was always sweet. Would that be the case with Martin Scorsese who shocked the catholic world with The Last Temptation of Christ in 1987 and balmed their hearts with Silence in 2016?
Martin Scorsese—Marty—was born to Charles and Catherine Scorsese, the sons of Sicilian immigrants. His father worked as a presser in a garment factory, and his mother was a seamstress. Martin and his brother grew up on the streets of New York, in the middle of the Italian-American community, where organized crime was flourishing. His films often reflect the world he grew up in and the violence he encountered at every step. His parents also appear frequently in his films.
The other major influence in his life came from the Catholic Church, to which Marty was devoutly attached and which impressed him so deeply that, from childhood through adolescence, he wanted to become a priest. He even entered the “minor seminary,” but was expelled shortly after because of poor grades and because he had fallen in love with a girl. Still, he did not give up on the idea entirely, but he turned—he thought temporarily—to his other passion: film.
As a child, Martin Scorsese spent most of his free time at the cinema, as he suffered from asthma and, as he says, his parents didn’t know what else to do with him. But they didn’t go to the movies just to pass the time—his father was a cinephile himself, and Scorsese recalls that they were the first family in their building to own a television. “Movies were always a luxury he could afford, even when there was no money at all.”
His fascination with film was cultivated religiously over the years, alongside his devotion to the Church. He even had a priest who visited his neighborhood when he was a teenager, played classical music for him and the other boys, took them to see films, and discussed them together.
After the failure at the seminary, Scorsese attended high school in the Bronx, planning to go on to a Jesuit university. That proved impossible because of his poor grades.
He went to NYU because they also offered film studies. He still hadn’t given up the idea of returning to the seminary. Shortly afterward, he decided to stay with film.
He remembers wanting to make a film about Jesus immediately after seeing The Robe (1953)as a child.
When he began working on The Last Temptation of Christ in 1987, Martin Scorsese was already an established director. His films had been the vehicles that brought Academy Awards to Ellen Burstyn (Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, 1974), Robert De Niro (Raging Bull, 1981), and Paul Newman (The Color of Money, 1986). The Last Temptation of Christearned Scorsese his second Oscar nomination for Best Director.
One of the actresses he had worked with earlier—Barbara Hershey, from Boxcar Bertha(1972)—had given him the book The Last Temptation of Christ, written by the Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) and published in 1955.
While preparing the film—after the cast, sets, and costumes were ready—the studio withdrew its support, fearing religious scandal, as they were already receiving threats, even though the power of such protests had diminished considerably. “It wasn’t going to be a grand, spectacular, or realistic narrative. It had to be a film about people.”
Scorsese tried everything: he reduced the budget to the minimum, spoke with many potential backers, but the film simply could not be made at that moment. The producers who eventually agreed to support the film asked him why he cared so much about making it. “This way I can come to know Jesus better,” Scorsese answered simply.
The film was made for Universal Studios in just two months (October–December 1987), with a very modest budget even for the 1980s: only 7 million dollars. Highly controversial, the film was not a box-office success, earning only about 8.3 million dollars. To put things in context, it ranked 97th in the American box office for 1988.
The film sparked a vehement reaction from both the Church and believers around the world, a reaction to the way Scorsese chose to illustrate his conviction expressed in this statement:
“I know from a priest friend that Kazantzakis’s book is used in seminaries—not as a substitute for the Gospels, but as a fresh and vivid parable on which they can debate and argue. That is what I wanted the film to suggest.”
Instead, it stirred up a large number of people worldwide who considered it blasphemous. The film was boycotted with all the force religious groups still had. Hundreds of thousands of angry letters flooded the studio, there were street protests, people with placards, cinemas that refused to show the film—and this was in the relatively peaceful United States, where religious influence on cinema had greatly diminished. In Paris, violent protests erupted in front of the cinema on premiere day, followed by incidents in several French cities, many injuries, and the film’s withdrawal from theaters shortly afterward. Condemned in Israel, banned in Greece—where Kazantzakis’s book was already on the Orthodox Church’s “index”—Scorsese’s film was also condemned by the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Conference as ‘morally offensive’.
Reactions to The Last Temptation of Christ were not entirely negative. Critics appreciated it, it earned Scorsese his second Oscar nomination, and even some members of the clergy liked it. Among them was Paul Moore, the Episcopal Bishop of New York, who, after seeing the film, recommended that Scorsese read the novel Silence by Shusaku Endo, a highly regarded contemporary Japanese author. Scorsese read the novel and immediately wanted to adapt it. This took 27 years.
Throughout that time, Scorsese admits he was obsessed with making the film, but he faced all sorts of obstacles. Despite all his success over the years, he found it impossible to get the project started. With the help of many people who believed in him, he managed to overcome a series of legal issues related to rights, raise money, and work without a salary—while the actors also worked for very little, making many sacrifices. They all relied on Martin Scorsese’s faith in this film.
Just like The Last Temptation of Christ, Silence was for Scorsese a deeply physical experience. Even so, he is convinced he made it at the right time, and that this was the film’s moment. Silence is already considered by some critics to be Martin Scorsese’s best film. Many argue it is his most Catholic one.
The story is simple. Two Jesuit priests, Sebastião Rodrigues and Francisco Garupe, ask their superior for permission to travel to Japan in search of their mentor, Father Ferreira, also a Jesuit, who had gone there years earlier to support the Catholic community. The action takes place in the 17th century, when Christianity was forbidden in Japan. Rumors claimed that Ferreira had renounced his faith and was now living as a Japanese. Trusting deeply in the man who had taught them, the two young priests embark on an extremely dangerous journey.
With the help of Kichijiro—a Christian who denies Christ every time he is caught, only to return for confession just as often—the two priests reach several hidden Catholic communities who practice their faith in secret, terrified of persecution. Here, the missionaries from Catholic Europe discover an entirely different world. Their own faith is now tested as they witness the atrocious violence inflicted upon the Christians.
What does God want from us in such moments? Does He see the suffering His believers endure? What kind of Christian are you if you deny Christ? Can you live with that afterward? How far should you go? Does God want you to die? Why is He silent? These are only some of the questions the film raises, and none of them receives an answer. Scorsese is more discreet than ever. He asks the questions and leaves us all to find the answers. In silence. A silence he remembers hearing only in St. Patrick’s Cathedral when he was a child, a place where he sought refuge from the noisy streets of New York.
Andrew Garfield, who plays Father Rodrigues, prepared for the role for an entire year, living among Jesuits and participating in the spiritual exercises proposed by St. Ignatius of Loyola.
“Then I would talk with Marty, usually for a long time, and we always ended our conversations with five or six minutes of silence because we knew we had come as close as possible to the core of the answer, while at the same time being light-years away from it. He would say, ‘Okay, kid, until next time,’ but we never got past that point. We always went deeper and deeper, and yet further from the answer.”
“The question the novel boils down to is this: Are you a Christian? The question, asked by Garupe to the peasant Kichijiro, is one Rodrigues must answer for himself before he steps on the image of Christ and long after. It is a question the Church cannot answer on behalf of the supposed Christian—nor the mentor, nor society. The novel is not about the missionary’s struggle with a hostile culture. When the magistrate says this, Rodrigues denies it: No, no…Without realizing it, the priest raises his voice. My struggle was with Christianity in my own heart.”
The film premiered at the Vatican, in a pontifical university, in front of 400 Jesuits. There was also a special screening in the Vatican film archive, preceded by Martin Scorsese’s audience with Pope Francis. Both men come from Italian immigrant families, both grew up going to the cinema often, and both wanted to be missionaries in their youth.
A spectator’s question to Scorsese after the screening of Silence: “The Last Temptation of Christ and Silence—where do these two films stand in your mind and in your art?”
Scorsese replied: “The Last Temptation of Christ brought me to a certain stage of my journey. It had to do with the Incarnation and with my conviction that Jesus Christ is fully divine, fully human, and what that might mean… It seemed there was still a long way to go on that journey. But it’s not that simple. It’s not a simple film and it’s not a simple book… But for me, as a believer, non-believer, skeptic, having faith, not having faith, going through life, making mistakes—I don’t know. Trying to improve my life, to feel that I’m alive, to live in a better way for myself and for those around me first of all—The Last Temptation of Christdidn’t help me move forward that much. I knew that Silence was, for me, at that moment in my life, a sign, a calling. It urged me: discover me, or at least try… I’m not Thomas Merton or Dorothy Day… I admire them and all that, but… how can you be like them? How can you live like them in everyday life? That means reaching the essence of true Christianity, I think, for me as a Roman Catholic. Because when (Father Rodrigues) apostatizes, he gives up everything that makes him proud and is left with nothing but service, compassion. So he gives up religion, he gives up his faith in order to gain his faith. Wow. How can he do that? It’s incredible. Can you do that?”
Asked, before meeting Pope Francis, what he would tell him about his work, Scorsese said:“I would tell him that I have tried, in what I’ve done, to find out how to live—I’ve tried to explore what our existence truly means and what its significance is.”