Silence

“It's alright. Step on me. I understand your pain. I was born into this world to share men's pain. I carried this cross for your pain. Your life is with me now. Step.” A powerful exploration of the relationship between suffering and faith. Is it vanity to suffer or cowardice to experience comfort and joy? What was ultimately the example Christ set with his crucifixion? To live a good life on earth or to die a good death? What are our responsibilities to one another’s bodies and what are our responsibilities to each other’s souls? Heady questions without answers necessarily. Ultimately, one of the more heady explorations of Scorsese’s career and somewhat of a culminating project. As an artist, Scorsese has interacted with his catholicism since Mean Streets, at least. If you boiled down the man’s career to two themes (you shouldn’t) it’s a questioning about the essential nature of the American man and his greed and more personally the greatness of the sacrifice Christ makes and perhaps what that has to do with the first theme. I think his best works may be in the vain of the latter theme.