Silence

Possibly one of the saddest movies I will ever watch and definitely one that I have watched now. The emotions awoken inside me throughout this movie were agonising to bear, almost bringing tears to me multiple times. The ending is even sadder, knowing that these men were forced to give up their faiths, and no success was achieved; I’m aware of the cross in Rodrigues’s clothing - which was sentimental - in the last scene but he still was defeated in the end. **“These people are the most devoted of God’s creatures on Earth. Father Valignano, I confess I began to wonder… God sends us trials to test us and everything he does is good, and I prayed to undergo trials like his son, but why must their trials be so terrible, and why when I look in my own heart do the answers I give them seem so weak.” ** The several scenes involving persecution are very overwhelming. The Japanese force these faithful believers to commit apostasy, and deny their faith; some comply, and many refuse. This leads to the massacre of many Christians, who died crying out to God, suffering in their last moments. As a strong believer in my faith, this truly hurt to watch and I sympathised with those who refused to commit apostasy and those who even did commit apostasy. When enduring so much torture, the human mind can only suffer so much to the extent where even the most faithful are defeated, including Father Ferreira who had continued to lived in Japan as an Apostate; crushing the heart of Rodrigues once he finally found the man who he set his visions on finding after many years. That whole scene where Rodrigues finally finds Ferreira is melancholy, which reflected the heartbreak of Rodrigues onto myself, making it a hard scene to watch as Ferreira was not the same man anymore; he chose to live. It is that moment right there when Rodrigues loses all hope, but not faith in God. He finally submits to the Japanese to end the suffering of many Christians once he apostatised, due to him hearing Jesus’s voice and realising it is for the greater good. “Lord, I fought against your silence.” “I suffered beside you. I was never silent.” “I know.      But even if God had been silent my whole life, to this very day, everything I do, everything I’ve done… Speaks of him. It was in the silence that I heard Your voice.” Silence demonstrates that faith is very prominent to a person’s strength, and once you take that away, you become corrupted. Abandoning something that you completely believed in can be achieved through suffering and persuasion; just how Ferreira was ‘cured’ in the eyes of the Japanese. His soul was corrupted and shaped into the very thing the Japanese desired, they made him an example, along with the death of many other Christians. The demise of Priests in Japan in this movie was extremely sad, with the final one being Rodrigues, who showed tremendous faith and surrendered to end the suffering of his fellow companions. My perspective of this movie will allow me to perceive it in two ways, one being that faith is everything to a person, and two being that persecution to a religion or race is inhumane and disgraceful to those who commit such heinous acts. I sympathise for every human who endured persecution throughout history, it is undeserving and the perpetrators should be ashamed of themselves. *Let this movie be an insight on faith as well as persecution. *“Surely God heard their prayers as they died…   but did he hear their screams?”**