The Spiritual Exercises are central to Jesuit training: The series of prayers and meditations is drawn from the experiences of the order’s founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola, as he discerned his relationship with God. Although lay people do go through the Exercises, it’s not a typical feature of method acting. “To see someone who had had little formal training in prayer enter into the most demanding retreat experiences and give himself to it, and come out on the other side fulfilled and changed, I would say, is something of a miracle,” Martin said.

As Garfield immersed himself in Jesuit spirituality, Martin also reviewed the script for errors of tone and of theology—to more accurately describe the way a Jesuit priest might relate to suffering, for example. The result is a rare deep dive into the Catholic order, whose priests became known in the 17th and 18th centuries for their ability to venture into foreign territories and establish relationships with scholars and dignitaries. It’s catnip for anyone who is interested in Jesuit history or teachings; in late November, the Vatican screened the movie for 300 Jesuit priests, and Scorsese even met the pope.

But to Martin, the appeal wasn’t just in seeing his Jesuit brothers depicted on screen. As a priest, he appreciated that the film does not offer a rosy or simplistic view of religion. “This is real spirituality, not fake spirituality,” he said. “Fake spirituality is the kind of stuff you see on Hallmark or Lifetime, where if you only believe in God, everything will be fine, and no need to worry.” As the characters find out, bad things do happen, even to people who are intensely devoted to their faith, and it’s not always clear what they should do.

Among the many questions Silence raises is one concerning the moral ambiguity of mission work: The priests must grapple with the violence they bring upon the peasants. Throughout the film, characters subtly question whether Christianity can truly travel across cultural borders. Imperial officials insist that Christianity cannot “take root” in Japan, and eventually, Ferreira and Rodrigues come to see the country as a “swamp,” a place where the religion could never thrive.

Rather than using Silence as a bully pulpit for a critique of colonial power, though, Scorsese probes the missionary question for ambiguity, portraying the priests’ choices as morally complex. In the end, it isn’t clear that the missionaries, who treated the peasants with dignity, did more harm than good, even though their actions inadvertently resulted in many people’s deaths. Even after some of the peasants chose to step on the plate, imperial soldiers often continued to torture them—the priests brought their faith into a country whose state forces were already, in many ways, hostile to the well-being of the poor. It’s also not clear what they accomplished: Ferreira, the so-called “fallen priest,” offers up the fact that the peasants understood “son of God” to literally mean “sun” as evidence of their misapprehensions about Christianity. This is the power of Silence: It leaves no protagonists free of moral burden, and proposes no firm conclusions to the ambitious questions it takes on.

Artistically, it’s difficult to pull off—to architect a nuanced, respectful interrogation of moral, religious questions in a way that’s compelling and accessible. But the truly counter-cultural coup is that Scorsese has legitimized these questions as fair game for sophisticated, mainstream art. God’s silence is not just a matter for church halls and cathedrals, Scorsese has declared. Any moviegoer can grapple with the meaning of Jesus’s blank stare.

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