From intimate McCabe brownness to intimidating Army of Shadows blueness, the Silence palette reflects the dark contrasts of faith in theory and practice. Essentially, the West dishes, but it can't take. Scorsese nails the eerie dissonance of Westerners in a foreign land they presume to understand — mountain fog, thick accents that almost veer into Jerry Lewis territory, a prostrate game of Eastern fawning to Western might. Yet Scorsese's most sensitive characterizations picks up on the subtleties of Shusaku Endo's 1966 novel, his Preston Sturges care for supporting actors anchors him firmly on the side of the Japanese Christians caught in the melee inflicted upon them: Nana Komatsu as a peasant sizing up Father Rodrigues with confused yet curious eyes (she accepts he is the real deal, only to be betrayed in the film's most brutal sequence), Kichijiro (Yōsuke Kubozuka, channeling the bounding liveliness of Toshiro Mifune's Seven Samurai imp, then settling upon his own muted tragic gravity) is the not-quite-Judas who survives to suffer for a partially-ungrateful priest who suffered to survive.

It's a curiously bleak film. Private moments between priest and flock, between Westerner and Japanese, are interrupted by the sudden intrusion of outside forces: Japanese imperialists, cavernous mountainsides, unimpressed and uncaring waves of the ocean. Every scene of Christian victory is weighed down with a heavy existential hopelessness. As Rodrigues, the Japanese, and quasi-Judas Kijichiro recreate the 30 pieces of silver tableau, in the background we hear a harsh Johnny Guitar wind and see a hard Mark Rothko division between flat-top-mountain and sky. Both the Ray film and the Rothko aesthetic (with their embrace of chilling emptiness and brutal color contrasts) find a welcome home in this chilling iconographic riff off history; as well it should, Scorsese and Endo are both intensely fascinated with the godlessness of situations, why God would refuse to appear to this naïve priest so hell-bent on converting without realizing the grave consequences of his actions, how a people could still passionately take up belief in a system that was "pushed" onto them. There's a scary, calm rhythm in the shots of a Japanese local-leader drowning slowly on a crucifix in a choppy sea. Refusing to think of himself as Jesus (a sharp contrast with Rodrigues' almost whiny cries of "Father, why have ye forsaken me?"), he has disturbingly accepted his fate. Back on the shore, a peasant woman makes the sign of the cross, and immediately bulges her eyes as she does it; she is shocked at her forwardness, did somebody see, will she be ratted out, too? (Here, the guilt of faith.) As the waves smack his face, the local-leader cries out and looks off as he sees Paradise; the look on his face, alive, is ecstatic (Here, the triumph of faith.); when he is taken down, the face is gnarled, twisted, gashed in many ways. (Here, the doubt of faith.) In these moments, does the Body reflect the Spirit? At the end of this taxing sequence, we have a calm cut to just the waves, no people, no voices, just the loud silence. The ocean cares not for human frailties, kills not against a "believer" or a "non-believer", an "Easterner" or a "Westerner", simply drowning whatever comes in its path. Yet the sea sings with sorrow for all human lives lost, lost in the fray of Western Christianity pushed against a people's will, lost via those who martyr themselves as the highest price for a spiritual being powered on Belief, lost because of the power-games played by the leaders on top with the pawns at bottom. In the end, the great forces of nature, of the spiritual 'un-knowable' realm of this world, equalize everything — the struggle seems all so futile, so callous. What's it all for, in the end? The privacy of a moment of grace, of epiphany, is what the picture builds towards; yet we aren't privy to any epiphanies but Rodrigues', and even this is glanced from a distance.

Ah, yes, that cosmic climax — that desperate, final shot. Post-mortem Rodrigues is shown, in an impossible cheat-shot into his burning urn, tightly holding on to a crucifix which has Forrest Gump'd its way through the film without a scratch. Here, two belief-systems get combined: the ever-disintegrating nothingness and acceptance of suffering that Buddhism promotes, and the grace and moment of salvation that Christianity promotes. A stealthy tango, but as one reviewer notes, is this enough to bring back Kichijiro? Hardly. A gesture that cannot be declared either "completely redemptive" or "completely meaningless." Scorsese has always dealt in maddening ambiguities. See: the ugly, woman-hating milieu of the hard-to-grapple-with Taxi Driver, or the amiable, pitiable creeper-stalker Rupert Pupkin in King of Comedy. Marty's ambiguities frustrate viewers who need clearer lines drawn. Yet I wouldn't have it any other way.