Courtesy Catholic News Service
I’m attending the joint Signis/Catholic Media Conference (CMC) in Quebec City, where we have had the extraordinary privilege of speaking with Martin Scorsese about the making of “Silence,” his movie based on Shūsaku Endō’s book about mission and apostasy in 17th-century Japan. The film deals with Jesuit missionary priests forced to deny the faith – by treading on an image of Christ – in order to end the ongoing torture of fellow Christians.
Scorsese recalls a childhood spent in and around St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York City, where he served as an altar boy. The imagery of the church was of martyrs, he remembers, of suffering and sacrifice. Turning to the making of “Silence,” he asks the audience of Catholic filmmakers, journalists and communicators: “What is beyond the image? What is the spiritual resolution, if any, beyond the image? Do we get distracted by the image?
“The image is there to help us, to move us. Particularly if you see a lot of suffering around you … it doesn’t let you off easy by hanging out in the cathedral. Because it’s outside, is the issue. The cathedral helps, the focus helps, the ritual helps … The ritual is important but one has to understand what is the heart of it, what is the core of it, what is the truth of Christianity?”
The obsession simply to make movies has itself been a significant driver for Scorsese, he freely confesses, and one that has wrought havoc on his personal life. “But the stories have always been about how we should live who we are. … Here is the key: How do you live a life that you learn about from some very good people in that cathedral, downtown. You hear how we should live. And then how do you do it outside the cathedral? In the street?
“ ‘Mean Streets’ actually starts with that. ‘Mean Streets’ is talking about penance, [the voiceover at the beginning of the movie] is talking about atonement for sins. If you don’t do it at church, you do it at home, you do it in the streets – and the rest is nonsense. [As a public servant, for example], how do you deal with the generosity of compassion? How do you live a life that is, in my case, a Christian ideal in a world that has a lot of evil?”
Scorsese spoke about the difficulties he encountered in making an earlier film with an ontological theme, “The Last Temptation of Christ.” At one point in 1983, Barry Diller, head of Paramount Studios asked him why he wanted to make this film – beset with problems as the production process had become. “And I did say, to get to know Jesus better,” Scorsese told the CMC. “That was the answer that came to mind. I didn’t know what else to say. … That was the journey. … Even though we were of different faiths, different ideas, we were part of a movement – something that had to be done in order for us to explore the Christologically correct aspect of, fully human and fully divine. Where do we find ourselves, there? How do we know Him in that sense, really? That’s what we were looking for.
“After it was over, especially with the reaction against it, it wasn’t finished. This took us up to a certain place and now, if we can, we go further. When we find ourselves there, how do we know him? It wasn’t finished. The journey’s much more involved. [The making of ‘Silence’] was to go deeper.
“Father Principe [the priest at the St. Patrick’s of Scorsese’s childhood] used to say of my films, ‘Be careful there’s not too much Good Friday and not enough Easter Sunday.’ But we have Easter Sunday in this film. We do, I believe. And it’s something very special. We’re looking for the very core of faith, and what faith is.”
Catholic News Service carried a full report of the interview with Scorsese including the above photo by Chaz Muth of Catholic News Service and one from our diocesan neighbor Sam Lucero, of The Compass – both attendees at the conference.
