Conclave: A Review - Committing a Cinematic Cardinal Sin

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A well-crafted and well-acted film that ultimately condemns itself to hell with an inexcusable plot twist that is so inane as to be infuriating.

Conclave, directed by Edward Berger and written by Peter Straughan (adapted from Robert Harris’ book of the same name), tells the story of Cardinal Lawrence, a man struggling with his faith who must navigate palace intrigue in the Vatican as the College of Cardinals assembles to elect a new pope.

On the surface, Conclave has a lot going for it. For example, it stars a cavalcade of top-notch actors, with Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence, Stanley Tucci as Cardinal Bellini, John Lithgow as Cardinal Tremblay and Isabella Rossellini as Sister Agnes among the cast.

In addition, it is directed by Edward Berger, whose last film, All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), was a phenomenal, Academy Award nominated piece of work, my favorite of that year because it was so beautifully shot and masterfully executed.

On a personal note, as a Catholic myself (I’m not a good one…but I definitely am one) who has visited the Vatican on numerous occasions, I find the subject matter of a conclave in the wake of a Pope’s death, and the pomp and circumstance and politicization and jockeying for positioning that takes place, to be extraordinarily compelling.

And speaking of politics, in the wake of the US presidential election, Conclave is perfectly positioned to have something interesting to say about elections and liberals versus conservatives and the power of convictions and possibilities of backlash.

This is all to say that Conclave, which was released in the U.S. on October 25th and is still in theatres, had me in the palm of its hand even before I sat down in the theatre to watch it.

And yet…it failed to capitalize on all of its advantages and, in fact, alienated me in such a profound way with an excruciatingly egregious and inane plot twist, which I found to be a mortal moviemaking sin and entirely unforgivable.

In order to avoid spoilers, I will not reveal the specifics of the plot twist but will only say that it occurs in the final ten minutes or so of the film and is so contrived, bizarre, atrocious and appalling, and is such a grievous dramatic error, and so narratively unsound, that it ruined everything good about the film that led up to it and completely scuttled the good ship Conclave.

But besides that…how was the play Mrs. Lincoln? Truthfully, it was pretty good.

The film is well shot by cinematographer Stephane Fontaine, who uses a soft light and wonderful composition to often times create scenes reminiscent of Caravaggio’s great works.

Fontaine is aided by the spectacular work of the set and costume designers who masterfully recreate the distinct look and feel of the Vatican and the Cardinals’ outfits.

In addition, the entire cast all do tremendous work.

Ralph Fiennes in particular is outstanding. His Cardinal Lawrence is the Dean of the College of Cardinals and must wrangle the Cardinals to come together to vote for a pope and make sure everything is on the up and up…and it is never quite clear who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.

Fiennes is a supremely gifted technical actor whose skill is as good as anyone working today, and he brings all of those skills to bear as Cardinal Lawrence, a man who is struggling with his faith and his self.

An Oscar nomination, and even a win, could and should be in Fiennes future for his work in Conclave.

The supporting cast are also excellent.

Stanley Tucci is as reliable an actor as there is and he brings a subtle power to portrayal of liberal Cardinal Bellini that is enjoyable to behold. Tucci expertly embodies the illiberal liberal who is enthralled by himself more than humanity.

John Lithgow’s Cardinal Tremblay is a character that in lesser hands would’ve been forgettable, but here, Lithgow never breaks and lets the audience off the hook, so even after the film has ended, you’re still wondering if he’s a mistreated martyr or an exquisite liar.

And Isabella Rossellini has a small role as Sister Agnes, but every time she is on screen she crackles with an incandescent light and life that is undeniable.

But despite all of the magnificent artistry on display in the form of the acting, cinematography and costumes and set, Conclave commits too egregious a sin to ever be forgiven.

That sin, which is not venial sin but a mortal one, is the cheap, absurd and unearned plot twist that turns a compelling Catholic mystery and thriller into a pandering and pathetic cinematic exercise that feels like it deceived and betrayed you and stole two hours of your life.

For Catholics, Conclave will hold some appeal because it is a look behind the curtain of something familiar but still mysterious, namely the inner working of the Vatican and the conclave. In this way the film is compelling for Catholics…until the plot twist…which not just many, but I would say most, Catholics will find at best annoying, and at most infuriating (I’m in the infuriating camp).

Non-Catholics will find the majority of the film impenetrable for its disorienting maze of Catholic-ness. For example, I’m not even sure I can ask my podcast partner Barry, who is not Catholic, to watch this movie because he’s not going to know, or care, about all the Vatican and Catholic stuff that made at least the premise of the film interesting to me.

Regardless of all that, the bottom line is that I simply cannot, and will not, recommend Conclave to readers because the plot twist near the end eviscerates any artistic good the film achieved which led up to it.

If you’re interested in watching a challenging yet entertaining piece of Vatican/Pope artistry, I recommend you go back and watch The Young Pope (2014) series on HBO starring Jude Law. That overlooked, off-beat, exquisitely avant-garde series is very insightful and spiritually invigorating.

And if you’re just looking for a great story of Catholicism and Catholic priests, I highly recommend you check out Xavier Beavois’ 2010 film Of Gods and Men. It is a extraordinarily moving and spiritually insightful piece of work.

Both The Young Pope and Of Gods and Men are everything Conclave should be but ultimately isn’t. Go watch them, and skip Conclave…I certainly wish I had.

©2024

The Wonder: A Review - If You Hate the Irish, You'll Love This Film

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. Some solid performances and beautiful cinematography are tainted by the film’s Hollywood narrative and truly ugly anti-Irish ideology.

The Wonder, directed by Sebastian Lelio and written by Alice Birch and Emma Donoghue based on Donoghue’s novel of the same name, is a new Netflix film that tells the story of an English nurse sent to a rural Irish town in 1862 to investigate the supposed miracle of a young girl who hasn’t eaten in four months.

The nurse, Elizabeth “Lib” Wright (Florence Pugh), must struggle against patriarchal forces, local custom, and deeply-ingrained religious belief to try and find the truth about what exactly is happening to Anna O’Donnell (Kila Lord Kassidy), the allegedly miraculous young girl.

The Wonder has a lot of things going for it in attempting to keep me interested. First of all, the film stars Florence Pugh, an actress of great talent and skill who thus far has never failed to impress me. Even in the recent cinematic disaster that was Don’t Worry Darling, Pugh delivered a worthy performance. No small feat in such a bad movie.

Secondly, my grandfather grew up in an impossibly tiny, rural village in County Mayo in the West of Ireland which was very close to the town of Knock. Knock, for those who don’t know, is a religious shrine and place of pilgrimage because in 1879 apparitions of the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph and St. John the Baptist all appeared to a group of villagers.

The Catholic Church has long since put its stamp of approval on the Knock incident and such notables as Pope John Paul II, Pope Francis, Mother Teresa and arguably the most Holy and most notable Catholic of all, me, have visited the shrine.

The Wonder reminds of the mystery at Knock because of the question of religious validity at the heart of its narrative as well as the rural and somewhat foreboding and forbidding nature of the setting.

All of this is to say that The Wonder had me intrigued simply from its premise, but unfortunately it makes certain choices, some odd, some predictable, some rather vicious and ignorant, that greatly diminishes its value.

For example, the film opens with the shot of a movie soundstage accompanied by a voice-over telling viewers “This is the beginning of a film called The Wonder. The people you are about to meet, the characters, believe in their stories with complete devotion. We are nothing without stories. And so we invite you to believe in this one.”

The camera then turns its attention to a movie set populated by actors, and through voice-over the narrator sets the scene telling us that its 1862 and English nurse Elizabeth Wright is headed to Ireland and the story begins…but not without a small comment that speaks volumes about the film’s ugly ideology – but more on that later.

I found this attempt at an unorthodox artistic opening to be painfully patronizing and distracting as it needlessly creates a hurdle to suspending disbelief while speaking down to its audience. The detached narrator later resurfaces in the film but not enough for it to be profound or to make any sort of narrative or artistic sense.

Once the actual story begins, we are treated to two positive things, firstly, Florence Pugh once again proves her worth as she gives a very solid performance as the lead “Lib”.

The rest of the cast all do solid work as well, with Brian F. O’Byrne, Ciaran Hinds, and Toby Jones doing dutiful work in supporting roles. Kila Lord Cassidy is also good as the young girl in question, Anna.

In addition to the acting, the film is beautifully shot by cinematographer Ari Wegner, who makes the most of the Irish setting and the candlelit era. Wegner scored an Oscar nomination for her work on The Power of the Dog last year and I wouldn’t be surprised if she snags another this year with The Wonder.

The problem though is that the window dressing of Wegner’s crisp and luscious cinematography and Pugh’s pointed performance are overshadowed by the smug, deplorable politics of the film and the pedestrian nature of its narrative, which ultimately spirals into preposterousness and banality.  

I’ll refrain from going too much further into the plot of The Wonder so as to avoid spoilers and conserve the viewing experience for those interested, but I will say that the Hollywood nature of the narrative ultimately fails to live up to the artistry of Pugh and Wegner.

The surface politics of the film are predictably trite with the usual misandry and anti-religious (more accurately anti-Catholic) sentiments of our vacuous era front and center. Pugh’s “Lib”, like every female protagonist nowadays, struggles against the all-powerful patriarchy which infects the entirety of the world with its singular evil. Yawn.

To give an indication of the film’s intellectual vapidity and political crudeness, “Lib” is the female “liberator” – how subtle - trying to free a young woman, Anna, from the grips of backwards Irish-Catholicism and bring her to a progressive utopia. Eye roll.

As formulaic as the ‘patriarchy as villain’ storyline is, the thing that really repulses is the unabashed anti-Irishness of the film.

Now for that small but revealing voice-over comment I referred to earlier. It was made by the narrator at the tail end of the unorthodox opening to the film. The narrator explains that “Lib” is an Englishwoman traveling to Ireland while the potato famine of the previous decade is tapering off, and then we are told with a seemingly straight face that “The Irish hold the English responsible for that devastation.” Ummm…No shit. “The Irish hold the English responsible for that devastation” BECAUSE THE ENGLISH WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT DEVASTATION!

What makes it even worse is that the narrative of the film is such that it doesn’t just minimize The Great Hunger, which killed a million Irish and displaced twice as many, its sub-text is that the famine was the fault of the Irish – to the point of being their choice. I mean, this is a story about a girl who doesn’t eat – and thus may be starving herself for ulterior motives. That’s pretty explicitly saying the Irish are liars responsible for their own starvation – which is obviously historically wholly inaccurate.

Imagine if a film about Jews in Europe in 1948 opened with a voice-over stating that in regards to the Holocaust “Jews hold Nazis responsible for that devastation” and then dramatized how Jews were actually the ones who caused the Holocaust, and the protagonist is a Nazi sent to liberate a Jew from other Jews. Or a film about former slaves in the American South in the wake of the Civil War describing slavery with “blacks hold white southerners responsible for that devastation”, and then dramatized that blacks were actually responsible for slavery and a white Southerner is the intelligent protagonist trying to free a black man from stupid and backward black people.

People in our current culture of outrage would be apoplectic at such an insidious and insipid twisting of history being imposed on those two groups that are officially-approved as victims. But with the Irish no one bats an eye at their attempted extermination first being downplayed and then actually blamed on them.

The Netflix show The Crown is currently getting some heat because Queen Elizabeth II recently died and they aren’t being adequately respectful to her or something, but The Wonder minimizes and Brit-washes the genocide of the Irish, and then blames the Irish for it, and no one says a word. Yes, let’s respect the Queen, symbol of British colonialism that murdered millions not just in Ireland but across the globe, and let’s portray these victims of the British Empire, like the Irish, as the true brutal monsters who brought the horrors upon themselves. Insane.

The Wonder maintains this aggressive anti-Irish attitude throughout, portraying the Irish as a cruel, backwards, barbaric and utterly savage people with Lib being the English voice of reason/saviour.

The film, not surprisingly, does the same with Catholicism. Of course, audiences are so conditioned to hate the Catholic Church in modern film (and culture) that I doubt anyone will care. And to be clear, it’s not like the Catholic Church over the years hasn’t dutifully earned the scorn it receives. It’s just that singling out a specific religion as an abominable institution, while whitewashing the evils of the British Empire, is a bit much and feels ever so slightly hypocritical.

Director Sebastian Lelio, a Chilean, may very well be ignorant of the history of Ireland, the British responsibility for the genocide of The Great Hunger and for centuries of violence and oppression across the globe. But if you’re going to make a movie about Ireland you might want to read up a bit on the place and the people. Lelio’s ignorance is on him. And if it isn’t ignorance, and if he really thinks this way, then that says more about his moral and ethical depravity than it does about the Irish and Catholicism.

The film’s co-writer Emma Donoghue, who authored the book it’s based upon, is an Irish woman. Her take on Ireland, the Great Hunger, and the relationship with the English is stunning for its imbecility. Donoghue’s Irish self-loathing is no doubt fueled by her having grown up a lesbian in Ireland, which at the time was a robust Catholic country. I assume that wasn’t easy, but hating Catholicism for its sins is still no excuse to ignore history and reflexively lick English boots.

It's fascinating to see Lelio and Donoghue’s hierarchy of beliefs play out in real time in their movie. I’ve no doubt both are devout liberals and believe they are profoundly expressing those beliefs with this story. But their blind spot is that they’ve placed anti-Catholicism, and by extension anti-Irishness, higher on their hierarchy than anti-British colonialism, which is both astonishing and revealing. This choice speaks to the current tortured state of the bourgeois, capitalism-addicted liberal mind and its accompanying depraved and trans-actional morals and ethics.

Despite the rancid ideology of the film, The Wonder is bursting with cinematic possibilities, but unfortunately the potential complexity of the premise is scuttled on the rocks of simplicity due to acute artistic vacuity and story-telling conventionality.

To the film’s credit, it did keep me captivated for a good portion of its 103-minute run time, but ultimately left me deeply dramatically and narratively unsatisfied at the end. In addition, it’s aggressive anti-Irishness left me aggravated and agitated.

The Irish have been through a lot through the years, from conquest to occupation to subjugation to discrimination to genocide to civil war to terrorism and all the rest. We’ve survived it all, and goodness knows we’ll survive some rather forgettable anti-Irish movie streaming on Netflix too.

©2022

It's a Miracle...Hollywood Finds Religion!

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 38 seconds

Hollywood is Allowing Catholics Who Are Not Corrupt or Pedophiles to Appear on Screen Again

Hollywood is currently making some surprisingly good Catholic entertainment with a refreshingly traditionalist bent.

As a practicing Catholic and a devout cinephile, I am constantly frustrated that Hollywood rarely gets religion right. Films and tv shows that touch upon Catholic and religious themes are often reduced to being either saccharine adoration in the hands of believing “conservatives” or vacuous vilification in the hands of agnostic “liberals”.

Considering there are 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in the world, and 84% of all people believe in one religion or another, it would seem a wise choice for Hollywood to explore Catholic and religious themed stories with much more regularity, artistic integrity and sincerity.

Hollywood and the Catholic Church need not be adversaries, as they have a lot more in common than one might think. For instance, they both have gobs of money and their hierarchies are littered with perverts and pedophiles. I’M KIDDING! As I said, I’m a practicing Catholic…and as my Catholic gallows humor shows…I definitely need more practice because I’m not very good at it.

Truth be told, now is actually a great time to be a Catholic cinephile because that den of iniquity, Hollywood, has recently shaken off its allergy to organized religion and turned its storytelling eye toward Catholicism with a striking spiritual seriousness and cinematic verve.

Tinsel Town’s recent mini-Catholic renaissance began in late November when it dipped its toe into the holy water font with the Netflix film The Two Popes. The movie, which features two compelling performances from Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce as Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis respectively, is visually uneven but surprisingly philosophically vibrant.

This was followed in short order by Terrence Malick’s artistically gorgeous and profound film, A Hidden Life, which hit art house theatres in late December and told the story of Franz Jagerstatter, a Catholic Austrian farmer turned saint for his conscientious objection to Hitler and the Nazi war machine.

Then in January, HBO premiered The New Pope, which is a continuation of the network’s highly stylized 2016 drama The Young Pope, a fictional account of Vatican intrigue starring Jude Law as an enigmatic Pontiff. The Young Pope and its new iteration The New Pope, are cinematically lush and quite theologically robust shows.

Considering that Hollywood is so reflexively liberal, especially in cultural matters, what makes these three projects so striking, beyond their simply being about religion, is that they shine an unabashedly positive light on traditional Catholic ideology.

For instance, I’m not conservative but even I was reticent to watch The Young Pope when it first aired in 2016 because I assumed it was going to be an intellectually lazy and predictably liberal spin on church matters. Much to my cinephile delight the show has consistently defied expectations, with Jude Law’s character Pope Pius XIII being a brazen crusader for old world traditionalism as an antidote to the menace of new world moral relativity and meaninglessness.

The Young Pope is certainly not reverential toward the Church, and this along with the show’s narrative audacity and occasional racy nature is maybe why some conservative Catholics find it blasphemous. But conservatives who dislike The Young Pope/The New Pope are missing the forest for the trees, as the show is a mature meditation on faith and is extremely respectful to Catholic teachings and belief in God.

The truth is that if conservative Catholics were cinematically literate and culturally sophisticated enough they would understand that The Young Pope/The New Pope is a beacon for potential religious traditionalists converts lost in the storm of pop cultural vacuity and idolatry.

The same is true of The Two Popes, which treats Catholicism, its adherents and God with the utmost seriousness. The debates in the film between Pope Benedict and Pope Francis perfectly encapsulate the present Catholic conundrum and the film goes to great lengths to respectfully highlight both men’s arguments as well as their personal failings.

 A Hidden Life furthers the traditional Catholic cause by showing the faith in action. Protagonist Franz Jagerstatter is the living embodiment of the commitment to Catholic faith and while his story certainly isn’t a happy one, for serious Catholics, it is ultimately a spiritually joyous one.

The entertainment industry acknowledging and exploring Catholicism is remarkable, bordering on the miraculous, as religion is usually either ignored, ridiculed or vilified in Hollywood productions.

This is why I find The Two Popes, A Hidden Life and The Young Pope/The New Pope to be such a breath of fresh air. Religion, particularly Catholicism with its hierarchical structure and global nature, is a veritable gold mine of dramatic potential, and it does my Catholic cinephile heart good to see it being so exquisitely utilized in artistically and spiritually satisfying ways.

Art and cinema are about asking difficult questions and potentially opening hearts and changing minds, and it seems we are currently in a cultural moment where the madness of the world has become so disorienting that even Hollywood is considering the unthinkable, that traditional religion might be of value in trying to make sense of it all.

I am sure, soon enough, Hollywood will revert back to its relentlessly diabolical ways and this glorious mini-Catholic artistic renaissance will be but a faded, distant memory…but for now…I am going to enjoy it in all its glory while it lasts.

A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2020

A Hidden Life: A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT IF YOU LOVE MALICK. This is a deeply profound film but director Terrence Malick can be impenetrable to those with more conventional tastes…so act accordingly.

A Hidden Life, written and directed by Terrence Malick, is the true story of Franz Jaggerstater, a Catholic farmer in rural Austria during World War II who must choose between his faith and pledging allegiance to Hitler. The film stars August Diehl as Jagerstatter, with supporting turns from Valerie Pachner, Michael Nyqivst, Matthias Shoenaerts, Bruno Ganz and Franz Rogowski.

2019 may be the greatest year for cinema of my entire adult life. After a bumpy start to the year, we’ve had masterpieces from major auteurs, like Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood, The Irishman, and Parasite, and we even had the down and dirty genius of the best comic book movie ever made, Joker, brought to us by Todd Phillips of all unlikely people. 2019 even had two stellar, art house science fiction films, Ad Astra and High Life, as well as a bevy of great foreign films, including Transit, Rojo and Bird of Passage. So with the year in cinema going so well I was thrilled to see that one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Terrence Malick, was throwing his hat into the crowded ring of 2019 before the end of the year.

Terrence Malick has long been one of my favorite film makers. His use of religious symbolism and philosophical themes, along with his unorthodox and impressionist visual and narrative style, have made Malick films must see cinema for me. Malick’s work over the last decade in particular, which included films such as Knight of Cups, Song to Song and his epic masterpiece The Tree of Life, has resonated deeply with me due to its intimate and spiritual nature. Maybe it is because I am one of the rarest of creatures in that I am Catholic and a cinephile, that Malick’s work seems to be so perfectly calibrated to my unique interests that it feels like he is making movies just for me.

It was with these thoughts in mind that I headed out to see A Hidden Life. The little I had heard of the film was that it was a return to a more linear narrative structure and was more akin to his magnum opus The Tree of Life than his recent allegedly autobiographical, experimental trilogy (To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, Song to Song). I consider The Tree of Life to be the greatest film of the last decade, and maybe of all-time, so my expectations for A Hidden Life were pretty high.

After seeing the film, I can report that A Hidden Life is not The Tree of Life, but it is a great film that is easily the most profound movie of the year. What makes the movie so profound is that it mediates upon the spiritual struggle inherent when living in an empire. Jagerstatter’s greatest choice was not between his soul and the Third Reich, but rather between choosing to decide or choosing not to decide and thus ignore reality. This is the same struggle Americans face…will we simply accept American empire and all the evils that accompany it, or will we put down our flags, our party affiliations, our identity politics, and instead fix our loyalty to truth above all else?

As for the particulars of the movie, after having seen it by myself I had a conversation with a “lady friend” who was interested in the movie. She asked me “how was it?” and my reply was, “it is very Malick”. Now as previously stated, “very Malick” is right in my wheelhouse…but for others, the more Malick a movie is, the harder it is for them to digest.

By “very Malick” what I mean is that the film is impressionistic in style and meditative in nature. A Hidden Life is definitely linear in structure as it follows a character from point A to point B, but it doesn’t go in a conventional straight line between those two points. The film has a near three hour run time and no doubt less adventurous movie goers will struggle with the film’s meandering pace and unorthodox approach, but if viewers can turn off their conditioning and simply let the film wash over them, it is a deeply moving experience.

Part of what makes Malick such a remarkable auteur is that no other film maker is able to capture the exquisite beauty, the fleeting profundity and suffocating existential angst of life itself. Malick’s masterpiece, The Tree of Life is the pinnacle of this experience, where life and death meet and spirit and soul collide and we are forced to confront and wrestle with our own mortality as we scream into the abyss hoping for an answer. In A Hidden Life as in all of his films, the weight of life and thought are conjured by Malick’s dancing camera and natural light. Jagerstatter is not so much the protagonist of the film as he is a projection of our dreams and a player in our spiritual nightmares.

The cast of A Hidden Life are a who’s who of European acting talent. August Diehl plays Franz Jagerstatter with a very German/Austrian control and stoicism. Diehl is a fine actor (he is spectacularly evil as an SS officer in Inglorious Basterds) but there were times when I felt that he may have been slightly miscast in the role of Jagerstatter, especially in a Malick movie. In Malick films actors must rely on their innate characteristics in order to survive and/or thrive. What that means is that a lot of scenes lack dialogue, or are improvised and are spliced together with perspective shifting cuts, and so the actor’s energy, their physical ease, and their face play big parts in telling the story. Diehl is gifted/cursed with a handsome but somewhat subdued face, which makes his performance at times less empathetic than I wanted it to be.

Franz Rogowski plays a small role as one of Franz’s military friends and I actually thought he would have been perfect in the lead role. Rogowski is like a German Joaquin Phoenix, they actually look quite similar, and he has a inherently empathetic face that is filled with emotion and meaning even when he isn’t speaking or emoting. Rogowski was fantastic in Transit this year, a film I highly recommend, and I think he would have been equally terrific as Franz Jagerstatter.

Other actors of note in the film are the late Bruno Ganz and the late Michael Nyqvist, both of whom have small roles but do spectacular work in them. Ganz and Nyqvist bring an emotional gravitas and fragility to their work in A Hidden Life that is a fitting epitaph for their brilliant careers.

Valerie Pachner plays Franziska Jagerstatter, Franz’s wife, and brings a vitality and earthy charisma to her work. Pachner is both strong and beautiful and her performance is both delicate and complex and gives A Hidden Life an emotional multi-dimensionality.

One of the things I most enjoy about Malick films is the cinematography. For A Hidden Life, Malick’s usual cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, who is one of the greatest cinematographers in the business and maybe of all-time, was absent, replaced by his longtime steadicam operator Jorg Widmer. Widmer is considered by many to be the best steadicam operator in the film industry, and he has worked with Malick in that capacity many times. I wasn’t aware that Lubezski wasn’t working on A Hidden Life going into it, but I immediately noticed that something was ever so slightly off about the cinematography. To be clear, the film is beautifully shot, and is gorgeous to behold, but as I watched it i just noticed things were a bit…different…than when Lubezki shoots a Malick film. Widmer’s cinematography was well-done but it lacked a bit of Lubizski’s precision and power.

The music in the film, by James Newton Howard, is haunting, extremely effective and deeply moving, as is the editing by Rehman Nizar Ali, Joe Gleason and Sebastian Jones.

The story of Franz Jagerstatter is the story of all of us living in the Eden of empire. We may enjoy our time in paradise but eventually, the corruption and spiritually corrosive nature of empire will seep into our Eden, and will soil it and spoil it. Then we will be faced with a choice…we can either decide to tell the Truth, or we can continue to lie, most notably, to ourselves. The road to Golgotha begins in Eden, with a stopover in Gethsemane, and we all eventually make that journey whether we want to or not. The difference between Franz Jagerstatter and the rest of us, is that he maintained his integrity and his humanity while he made that excruciating trip to judgement day. As the film ponders the “comfortable Christ”, a bourgeois creature created by the capitalists class that populates and animates American empire, that gives permission to the masses to live a soft and spiritually lazy existence, I couldn’t help but think to my own slovenly spirituality and its permissive banality. My flaccid Catholic education and the spiritually barren, co-opted by empire, Church that indoctrinated me with it, did not prepare me to live as profoundly and courageously as Franz Jagerstatter, never mind as Christ, so I have no doubt I would fail the same test he faced if put to it.

In conclusion, A Hidden Life, despite its few minor flaws, is must see for cinephiles, cinematically literate Catholics and Malick fans. For those with more conventional tastes, A Hidden Life is probably a bridge too far. I wish everyone would see this movie and could understand this movie as it speaks so insightfully to the time in which we live, but I am self-aware enough to understand that the cinematic language Malick speaks can be impenetrable to many, but glorious to those that can decipher it.

©2019

The Existential Catholic Crisis

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes 66 seconds

I was born and raised a Catholic. I am of that particular guilt-ridden strain of Catholicism known as Irish Catholicism. I wouldn't say I am a devout Catholic or even a good one, in fact, I am a pretty terrible Catholic...but I am still a Catholic. I have had a tumultuous and often-times tenuous relationship with the church throughout my adult life, an example of which is that I would often, in a futile attempt to be witty, tell people I was raised Catholic but that it was in remission.

In 2002, the revelations of priests buggering boys in Boston (my home parish at one point in time - I even met Cardinal Law once...he was a pompous ass and his breath smelled demonic...I am not kidding) erupted as a cataclysmic scandal, but having grown up in the church I knew for a long time something was seriously amiss, and thus that sex abuse scandal came not as a shock to me but as confirmation of my hunches.

SYMPTOMS

Why did I suspect that something was deeply wrong in the Catholic church? Well, for starters, nearly every priest I ever met was a horrible human being. I don't mean they were bad priests, which they were, but bad people.

An example, in my Catholic high school the lone priest there among the nuns was Father Hughes. Father Hughes was a flamboyantly gay man who obviously joined the priesthood in order to escape the perceived demon of his sexuality. How do I know Father Hughes was gay? Well...there were some dead giveaways...for one he was a walking stereotype to the point of caricature of a gay man most signified by his pronounced and audacious lisp and mannered style of speech. Another sign was that he often wore a satin black cape with a pink interior and described this signature fashion choice as being "understated elegance". Another solid clue was that he had a schoolboy crush on the star of the basketball team...so much so that he bought the young man, who was a very devout Catholic and a genuinely good guy, a car for graduation. Yes...you read that right...Father Hughes, who wasn't exactly rolling in dough as a priest at a Catholic high school, bought a male student a car for his graduation. Part of how I knew something was terribly amiss in the Catholic church is that no one, not a single person, said anything about this oddity at all. There were quizzical glances exchanged, but no one dare say aloud what they were really thinking if they even let themselves think it.

The thing that really struck me most about Father Hughes was that he was a vicious and mean spirited man. As stated, it was obvious Hughes was gay, but he would go out of his way to torment and torture the boys in school who seemed effeminate. This was the late 80's, so no one was "out" as gay at my school, but there were plenty of kids who "seemed" gay and sure enough in later years came out as gay, but in high school they were just struggling to survive being different. Father Hughes would constantly and brutally belittle them and mock their masculinity. It was a glaring case of the pot calling the kettle black...but no one said or did anything...most especially the coterie of nuns, many of whom had their own glaring issues...like the principle of the school who took a vow of poverty but bought a new Cadillac, earning her the well-earned and accurate nickname of Sister Anna Cadillac.

After Father Hughes left my school he went to another parish and proceeded to either overspend or steal, depending on who you believe, to the tune of nearly a million dollars....like I said, a good guy. After Hughes was abruptly replaced, the Church claimed that there were no criminal acts committed in this financial debacle, but as we know the Church never likes to admit scandal when it can be swept under the rug.

Father Hughes wasn't alone though, as the vast majority of priests I have known have been total sons of bitches and not even remotely resembling good ambassadors of Christ here on earth. They were all petty, vindictive and arrogant bastards who were the antithesis of Christ's teachings. The exceptions are the ones who have stood out, men like Father Ken, Father LeRoy and Father Felipe, all kindhearted and genuinely decent men...the rest of the priests I have known have all carved out a special place in hell for themselves.

Besides being terrible people, the majority of priests I have met are also more than likely gay...now that doesn't mean they are terrible because they are gay, just that they are simultaneously terrible and gay. Which brings us back to the scandals. The thing that is often muddied in regards to the Catholic church sex abuse scandals is that the majority of the incidents are not pedophilia where priests are abusing little children. The majority of sex abuse has been perpetrated upon males (81%) and the overwhelming majority of those abused boys have been older (adolescent/pre-teen) boys. The fact that most victims of abuse are adolescent boys is a terribly uncomfortable one for more liberal Catholics (and liberal people in general) who are disposed to view any question of a priest's homosexuality as a homophobic attack and who reflexively defend gay people for instinctual identity/tribal reasons.

DISEASE

I consider myself a Thomas Merton/Dorothy Day/Anthony DeMello Catholic, and so for years I have been lumped in as a "liberal Catholic". But after years and years of these scandals from Boston to Baltimore to Ireland, Australia and Mexico and everywhere in between, I think that the labels liberal and conservative Catholic no longer apply...there are only Catholics who are brave enough to see the truth and do something about it, or there are Catholics who prefer the warm embrace of their own self-satisfying and often self-righteous echo chamber.

I greatly disliked Pope John Paul II and found his canonization to be a repugnant public relations move because he was, in fact, an accomplice to sex abuse when he turned a blind eye to it, just as he did with the sins of American capitalism. John Paul II's vehement anti-communism forced him to be blind to the spiritual cancer of American capitalism and also caused him to accept the atrocities committed at the behest of America (El Salvador/Nicaragua etc.) even against his own priests and nuns, in order to be stalwart against the Soviet Union.

I also disliked Pope Benedict, as I found him to be little more than a garish hypocrite as he, like Father Hughes, was obviously as gay as Liberace but was vehemently opposed to homosexuality in the world.

I like Pope Francis, at least in theory. When Pope Francis came to the U.S. in 2015 and spoke at the Capitol building, he mentioned four people, two of which were Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day (the others were Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.), two people that some American Catholics consider at best unworthy and at worst heretics, but that I greatly admire. Pope Francis seemed to bring a new energy and light into the Vatican upon his arrival and I welcomed that breath of fresh air.

But now more revelations of sex abuse and scandal are coming into the light and Pope Francis's reaction to them and complicity in them is genuinely disheartening and demoralizing.

The first story to break was the rampant, career long sexual abuse by Cardinal "Uncle Teddy" McCarrick, who sexually abused both adolescent boys and seminarians. McCarrick was eventually forced to resign, but since the Vatican has known about his shenanigans for decades, this was little salve for the wound. It has also come to light that Pope Francis went above and beyond to protect McCarrick even though he was well aware of his depravity.

The other story was the grand jury report in Pittsburgh which revealed rampant and systematic sexual abuse and cover-up by the Diocese for decades. Sadly, Pittsburgh, like Boston and Ireland and Australia and countless other places, was rife with sexual predators and Bishops who aided and abetted their predation. I am willing to bet that if you look hard enough at any Diocese in the world, you will find the same level of depravity as has been proven to exist in Boston and Pittsburgh.

The most disheartening part about the Pittsburgh revelations was that the Church in response basically said..."oh well". The Bishop who was integral to the Pittsburgh scandal is now Cardinal Wuertz, and sure enough he is still a Cardinal and will face no recriminations. Pope Francis has paid lip service by asking for forgiveness...but not demanding accountability or making genuine change.

Pope Francis seemed as though he may very well be the man to turn the church around and root out the abusers and enablers but with the McCarrick and Pittsburgh scandals has proven himself to be a feckless charlatan...which pains my heart to say. 

This current crop of scandals has hit me where I live as just this past spring, after much strenuous soul searching, I decided, in no small part because of my optimism regarding Pope Francis, to have my son baptized in the Catholic church. I realize that most readers will find this decision at best misguided and at worst insane, I understand the sentiment, but for me at this time, after going through the greatest battle of my life in which I found great solace, guidance and strength in prayer and was on the receiving end of some outright miracles (a word I don't use hyperbolically), I felt a great spiritual and religious renaissance in my spirit. I wanted to share with my son the same connection to the God who, through his infinite mercy, had given us the glorious life we now share.

As more and more of the cancer on the soul of the Church and on St. Peter's throne in the Vatican has been revealed in the last few weeks, I have grown to regret ever more deeply my decision to have my son baptized a Catholic. Even after all the scandals that is a difficult thing for me to admit to myself. As an Irish Catholic, my Catholicism isn't just religious but cultural. In my lifetime fellow Irishmen and women were murdered simply for being Catholic and breaking my solidarity with those Irish martyrs is gut-wrenching.

DIAGNOSIS

The reason the Church is in such decline amidst the turmoil is because it has lost touch with the masculine. Yes, I know most liberal Catholics will be angry with that statement, claiming the Church is in decline because of the Patriarchy...but I vehemently disagree. The Church has been overrun in its ranks by self-loathing gay men who are trying to hide from the truth of their sexuality. These gay men are more in touch with the feminine than the masculine, which certainly isn't a crime but it is the truth. The lack of true masculinity in the Church has led to a feminization of Catholicism that is speeding its decline. The closeted gay men who make up the vast majority of the priesthood are not able to speak to the masculine needs of the men in their flock and so men have stopped going to church.

These gay priests are also, it seems, less able to contain their sexuality than their heterosexual counterparts, or at least less able to contain them around adolescents. This is not only unfortunate in terms of the scandals it creates for the Church but also that it feeds into the stereotypes used for decades by homophobes to discriminate against and punish gay people. But with that said, as much as I dislike coming to this conclusion, the evidence certainly supports it. To be clear, I am not repeating the old homophobic trope that all gay men are predators, but what I am saying is that most of the predator priests are gay...or to be more precise...these predator priests are distorted, contorted and tortured versions of gay men. It pains me to come to this conclusion because frankly, I support gay rights and gay marriage and wish the reality of the Church sex abuse scandals isn't what it is...but it is what it is.

There has long been talk of a Lavender Mafia within the Church and as the sex abuse scandals have come to light that belief has only strengthened as Bishops, Archbishops and Cardinals all sided with predatory priests over the children in the pews. One can only assume that these priests, Bishops, Archbishops and Cardinals were looking out for one another because they all had a secret that they believed to be so terrible that they couldn't come clean about anyone else for fear of their secret being revealed.

The conundrum for the Church is that their own teaching on homosexuality no doubt led to the scapegoating of homosexuals which in turn led some to want to hide their sexuality in the closet to try and escape the "wickedness" of their sexuality and found a way to do that by becoming celibate priests. Sadly, many of these closeted gay men were so emotionally, sexually and psychologically stunted that they were unable to abide by their vow of celibacy and instead have used their positions as priests to prey upon young men and boys.

There are those, like Father James Martin, who claim that the Church should modernize in regards to homosexuality and he blames the scandals on the Church's archaic view of homosexuality. I think Martin is blinded by his own plight (and sexuality) and therefore refuses to the see truth that is staring him in the face.

TREATMENT

As previously stated, I consider myself a Thomas Merton/Dorothy Day type of Catholic, which most would label as being a "liberal Catholic", but my response to the sex scandals will probably alienate both liberal Catholics and conservatives alike. If the Church is to survive in any relevant form, people must put aside the politics of religion and instead look for the Truth and solutions.

Unlike my liberal Catholic cohorts, I do not think allowing women to be priests will help, as I believe that it is a lack of genuine masculinity that has caused this scandal in the first place.  I think women are vital to the Church's survival and success, but I think the role of nuns should be expanded rather than women being allowed to become priests. I can see my dearest friend Sheila cringing as she reads this...my apologies Sheila...but I think at this time the addition of female priests would end up being catastrophic to the church in the long run. I think the Church needs to do less watering down of masculinity and more bulking up.

The solution to the Catholic Church's existential crisis will not come about by liberals defeating conservatives or vice versa...both sides have legitimate grievances and insights. Here is a list of things that I think not only should happen but need to happen for the Catholic Church to have any chance to survive and maybe even be relevant again, in a post-Christian era.

1. All offending priests AND Bishops, Archbishops and Cardinals who aided and abetted them, should be held accountable and jailed either by the jurisdiction where the crimes took place or by the Vatican itself (yes, the Vatican has a jail, albeit a tiny one). At the end of their prison terms they should be at a minimum defrocked and at a maximum ex-communicated, depending on the level of their contrition and penance.

2. The U.S. government and/or any local communities, should use the RICO statute to prosecute sexual offenders and those in power who cover up for them. The use of RICO (the statue used against organized crime to bring down mafia dons) will be accompanied by threat of a loss of tax exempt status for the Church if their is not cooperation from the hierarchy up to and including The Vatican. If you want to make the Vatican jump, you threaten their tax exempt status and they'll do whatever you tell them to.

3. All new priest hires must be heterosexual. These new priests are eligible to marry and in fact the best route for the Church to take is to hire men who are already married. Doing this will expand the ranks of priesthood tremendously and will in short order revitalize the priesthood and seminaries. The moratorium on hiring gay priests will not be permanent, but is a necessary ill right now in order to bring more balance back into the priesthood/church in terms of masculinity. Eventually in the future openly gay priests will be hired but again they must swear to be celibate in order to keep with Catholic doctrine. Heterosexual priests not already married must remain celibate until marriage.

4. The Church must compel any active priests who are gay to come forward and be open about their sexuality. These priests will retain their positions and will not be discriminated against in anyway. By compelling gay priests to come forward, the Church will be taking a giant step toward minimizing the stigma of being gay in a Catholic community, which is what has led to the aberrant behavior by so many gay priests. The Church will still uphold its current teaching on homosexuality, but it will be recognizing, embracing and protecting the dignity of gay people. The Church will not allow gay priests to marry and will not allow gay parishioners to marry in keeping with Church doctrine. Gay priests will also have to take and keep a vow of celibacy.

5. Any violation of sexual oaths or vows by any priest, regardless of sexual orientation, will result in a review by a board of lay people not connected to that particular parish. The same will be true for Bishops and Cardinals, who if they are accused will be vigorously investigated by an outside panel of independent lay investigators who will have the Church equivalent of subpoena power.

6. The Catholic Church must clean out clericalism thoroughly or burn the place to the ground. The Church can still be salvaged but it requires a complete overhaul...it must both simultaneously modernize and yet embrace its traditionalism. Modernize by allowing heterosexual priests to marry and homosexual priests to be openly gay but celibate in keeping with church doctrine and dogma. Also...a return to the Traditional Latin Mass in all parishes on Sundays where half the masses should be in Latin. Why a partial return to the Latin Mass? Well, because it brings a cohesiveness to the Church across the globe, where you could walk into any Church anywhere in the world on any given Sunday and hear the Mass in the same language. Again, this is not a total return, but partial...maybe the 8 AM mass in Latin and the 11 in the native language of the parish. A return to the Latin Mass will also reconnect Catholicism with mystery and sacredness.

7. And finally...a return to a vigorous embrace of education of Catholic values and history. I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic high school and yet my religious education was abominable. The paucity of true Catholic religious teaching is a scandal in and of itself. The Church should embark on a rigorous campaign to educate not only children but ADULTS on the substance of Catholic teaching. Ironically the Church needs to make it harder rather than easier, which will give the Church and Catholic teaching back its value. If Catholicism asks its adherents to make a strenuous commitment to the faith, it will become a sanctuary from the world where easy choices sap the spiritual strength of more and more people everyday. The Church has become little more than another bit of soft white noise in a chaotic world. By making itself into an antidote to the world, being in it but not of it, the Church can once again find its sea legs and be a pillar upon which the suffering, the downtrodden, the frightened and the alone can find strength and community.

CONCLUSION

Sadly, it is highly unlikely that the Church will do even one never mind all of these things. The Church has grown fat and decadent, not unlike America, and just like America it too will crumble under the weight of its own hubris. Clericalism is devouring the Church as the Pharisees are alive and well and living in rectories in every parish in the world.

The Catholic Church must remove its satin cape with the pink interior, toss away its elegance, understated or otherwise, and get some men with chests among its ranks in order to save itself. If it doesn't do this the Church will fade into oblivion among the plethora of feel good capitalist, faux-Christian/New Age alternatives.

My hope is that after the purging and cleansing of the toxic elements in the church that a more Mertonesque and spiritually serious type of church can grow in its wake. A Church built on service not clericalism, humility not arrogance, for the poor and not the wealthy. The Catholic church needs to be a church of the gutter instead of being a Church with gutter values. The Catholic church at its best is a church of skid row, not wall street, in other words...a church that reflects Christ.

The Church will either drastically change or it will die. The church has alienated true masculinity, and if it doesn't change course, it will reap the whirlwind and collapse in upon itself into the void created by that lack of masculinity.

As for me, these recent scandals have me so furious I am tempted to go to all of my local parishes and pull a Jesus and toss the money changers and the asshole priests out of the temple. The truth is though that I have little hope or faith in the Catholic hierarchy to change things and do the right thing because the rot is so deep, but as I can attest, miracles do occur. You never know, maybe I will be named Pope Mickey in 2019, I've gotten some bumper stickers made up in English and Italian just in case an election takes place (fingers crossed!). But if my run for the Papacy falls through, I have found a Coptic church and an Orthodox church near where I live, and they are in very serious contention to be my new religious home.

©2018

Silence : A Review

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!!

Estimated Reading Time : 6 Minutes 37 Seconds

My Rating : 4.5 out of 5 Stars

My Recommendation : SEE IT. If you are a Catholic you must go see it now!! If you are a person of no faith or of another faith or even another denomination, the film may not resonate with you as much as it did with me. You can see it at your leisure.

Silence, directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Scorsese and Jay Cocks, is the story of two Portuguese missionary Jesuit priests sent to Japan in the 1600's to try and find their missing mentor amidst a brutal nationwide persecution of Christians. The film stars Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver as the Jesuit priests, Tadanobu Asano as their Japanese interpreter and Liam Neeson as their missing mentor Father Ferreira. 

Silence is a testament to iconic director Martin Scorsese's filmmaking prowess. It is a monumental film, a grueling, staggering, unrelenting and intensely personal piece of work that is, without a doubt, one of the best of the year. Silence is not only a film about faith, but a film of faith, faith as failure, faith as doubt, faith as struggle. Silence is riddled with intriguing metaphors that speak to our time, on issues like personal faith, religion, cultural assimilation, arrogant colonialism, conquest and submission. 

As much as I was enthralled by Silence, I am acutely aware that others may not, and probably will not, feel the same way about it I did. If you are not a person of faith, or are a person of a non-Catholic faith, this may not be the film for you. The film could feel impenetrable for someone who has not spiritually struggled in a similar fashion as the film's lead character Father Rodigues struggles. The film is a question with no answer, and if you think you have the answer, then it will most definitely be lost on you. The film is also intensely and specifically Catholic. The Christ of Catholicism is a mystical whisper, a flicker in the dark, a distant yet vaguely familiar mystery. When and if Christ/God ever does speak with Catholics, it is in the stillness, in a voice as quiet as the grave and as thundering as the end of the universe or the beginning of one. If you are Christian but not Catholic, the film may feel spiritually foreign to you and thus be a more frustrating than enlightening experience.

Silence, while a marvelous and compelling film, is also not a perfect one. The film runs two hours and forty minutes which was cut down due to pressure from the studio from a reported running time of three hours and thirty minutes. The studio no doubt wanted a shorter running time in order to facilitate more showings per day-per theatre, which equals more money. As strange as this is to say, the film should have remained three hours and thirty minutes long, as it is too short at two hours and forty minutes. The third act of the film is clearly rushed and the overall power of the narrative undermined by that fact. I sincerely hope that at some point a directors cut of the picture is released so that Scorsese's true and entire vision can be seen and appreciated. The irony of the studio forcing Scorsese to cut the length of the film in order to get more showings, is that the film is performing dismally at the box office anyway. A film like Silence, directed by Martin Scorsese, one of the iconic filmmakers of all time, is a prestige picture and should be treated as such. The emphasis should be on bringing Scorsese's unmolested artistic vision to the screen, not trying squeeze every nickel and dime out of the public. Due to its subject matter, a dark religiosity and spiritual struggle, Silence had slim chances of being a box office smash anyway, so the studio would have been wise to shoot for a bevy of Oscar nominations and wins in order to drum up audiences. Once again the commerce of Hollywood has done harm to the art of a filmmaking genius, I am sure it won't be the last time. 

The performances in Silence are all very solid. Andrew Garfield easily does the best work of his career as Father Rodrigues. Garfield played a somewhat similar type of role in Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge this year, which was a terrible performance and a terrible film. Garfield's work in Silence is, thankfully, a million miles away from his lackluster work in Hacksaw Ridge. Garfield's performance in Silence is wonderfully crafted and filled with such a vivid internal life and struggle that he mesmerizes. Father Rodrigues' battle with fear, doubt, spiritual vertigo and pride are compellingly captured by the complex and layered work of Garfield. Garfield creates a character that is hoisted upon the cross of his own grandiosity and arrogance, who is both filled with a ferocious religious fire and also a delicate emotional and spiritual fragility. Garfield never wastes a moment on screen, or rings a false note in his entire magnetic performance which carries the picture upon his frail shoulders. 

The supporting actors do solid if unspectacular work, especially compared to Andrew Garfield's work. The Japanese cast are all excellent across the board though, with Tadanobu Asano being the most noteworthy. His work as the priest's Japanese interpreter is crucial for the film and he never fails to captivate with his character's, at times, infuriating behavior. 

Adam Driver and Liam Neeson do average work in supporting roles as Jesuit priests. I found Neeson to be, surprisingly, a bit underwhelming in his role. Driver was better than I thought he'd be, but he too never rises to the heights that Garfield does in terms of intensity and intricacy of performance. 

After seeing the film I read up on the history of its development and production and the struggle it took to get it made. Apparently the film had been in development hell for over twenty years. One tidbit that I found fascinating was the cast that was scheduled to star in the film a few years back when it got closest to being made. That scheduled cast was stellar and included Daniel Day- Lewis, Benicio del Toro and Gael Garcia Bernal in the three main roles. As much as I loved seeing this rendition of Silence, once I read that those actors could have been in it, I thought that their portrayal would have been markedly better than the one that was made. Day-Lewis, del Toro and Bernal are far superior actors to Neeson, Garfield and Driver. With that said, I was thoroughly enraptured with Garfield and Scorsese's 2017 version, but it is fun to speculate on what may have been.

In conclusion, Silence is a gorgeous, challenging, brutal and ultimately wondrous film. It is an intimate glimpse into the personal passion and crucifixion of a man on the cross of his faith and doubt. If ever there were a film that captured the arduous, perilous and ultimately confusing journey along the secret path of Christ, this is it. Silence is an exquisite work of art from the filmmaking genius that is Martin Scorsese, and is unquestionably the very best film of the second half of his career, and it isn't even close. I readily admit that this film is not for everyone, and that people of no faith or different faiths than Catholicism, will probably not connect as deeply with the film as I did, or at all. But if you are a person of faith, particularly a Catholic, I think this is not only a great film for you to go see, but a vital one. Martin Scorsese's faith mirrors my own in many ways, a sort of Merton and DeMello-esque, Buddhist Catholicism of deep meditative questioning, and hard fought, doubt-riddled belief. If you are religiously and spiritually wired the same way I am, I think Silence is well worth your sparse free time and hard earned money. If you share the same type of spiritual outlook as I do, then you shouldn't just go see Silence, you should seek it out like a man who's hair is on fire seeks water. 

©2017