A Test of Faith

Faith is a virtue that can help us get through some difficult times in our lives. But what happens when our faith seems to come up short in a critical situation? Do we abandon this doctrine or do we maintain our fundamental beliefs?

That is one of the principal questions asked in Martin Scorsese's latest film Silence. Based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Shusaku Endo, the film covers the journey of two Jesuit priests in the 17th century that travel to Japan to find Father Cristovao Ferreira, a fellow Jesuit who wrote a letter detailing the tortures that local Catholics had to endure in Japan, where Buddhism was the only religion that was allowed at that time. The two priests, Sebastiao Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver) are emphatic with their elder Jesuit that they need to find Ferreira, who has disappeared and is rumored to have renounced God. Despite the elder's warning that this journey would be meaningless as well as dangerous, Rodrigues and Garupe know in their hearts that they must undertake this mission, as their Jesuit beliefs tell them they cannot abandon one of their own.

Scorsese has reportedly been trying to make this film ever since the novel was released; the wait was certainly worth it, as he has made one of his finest and most personal films. Much of the story deals with Father Rodrigues, who is captured and must witness the torture of local Catholics who look to him for spiritual enlightenment. His captors are unwilling to bend as far as allowing Catholicism to endure, but they are intelligent people that cater to the priest's will. They do not mean to harm him, he is told, but unless his followers renounce their Catholic beliefs, they will be tortured and in some cases, put to death.

This message holds the principal meaning in the film. Rodrigues is driven by the fact that his Jesuit education tells him to stay strong at all times, even in the face of unspeakable horrors. Yet, he is told repeatedly that his faith - in this case, his silence when asked to influence local Catholics - is the root of the problem. If he stubbornly refuses to change his beliefs, then that behavior will mean death for others. Is his devotion to God worth all the suffering that will take place?

Scorsese treats this story with intelligence and subtlety, both in the screenplay that he adapted along with longtime collaborator Jay Cocks, as well as in his direction. His work here is extremely fluid, a departure from some of more innovative camera tricks (such as the signature tracking shots as in Raging Bull and Goodfellas) he has employed in the past. In Silence, Scorsese take a more relaxed approach to telling his story; as he features numerous panoramic images that highlight both the beauty of the seaside as well as the foreboding nature of the jungle. In this regard, he is immeasurably aided by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who delivers a palette of cool blues and greens, along with deep browns. Prieto, who worked with Scorsese on his last film The Wolf of Wall Street, and has also been director of photography on such films as Argo, Babel and Brokeback Mountain, is one of the most talented directors of photography working today, and his compositions here are often breathtaking in their beauty, while some shots are heartbreaking in their impact.

At two hours and forty minutes, some will find this film to be overly long; I did not have that problem. The question of Catholic guilt, especially presented in this light, is a complex and troubling one, and cannot be treated on a surface level. Andrew Garfield's performance is first-rate, as he gives us a man that is obsessed and outraged, yet one who must keep his feelings to himself at critical times (we hear his thoughts in voice over narration at several moments in the film). His appearance, especially later in the film, when he has grown a full beard, is Christlike; Garfield embraces this and answers his enemies in a restrained, religious fashion. Together with his Oscar-nominated performance earlier this year in Hacksaw Ridge, Garfield has become a leading contemporary actor; it's nice to see his star on the rise.

There is a marvelous moment in Silence that delivers a significant message in a beautifully elegant, visual manner. Rodrigues is on his knees, drinking water from a local spring, when he sees his reflection; suddenly his face is transformed into that of Jesus and then back again to his own appearance. Just then, the face of one of his captors appears in the water next to his; all of this takes place in a matter of a few seconds. These images seem to connect Rodrigues with both God and his enemies; perhaps in their worship of a higher being, the priest and his conqueror are not so different after all.

Silence is a superb film, the work of an accomplished filmmaker that wants us to examine our beliefs, while presenting a story with a timeless message - are our convictions unshakeable? Can we look beyond our own creed to help others?

What I Loved at the Movies in 2011

Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill in Moneyball

Next week, I'll publish a post on my top 10 films of 2011, but first I need to review a few final films from last year. For today, however, I'm writing about some of my favorite things from movies from 2011; this will include some of the best sequences as well as acting performances along with screenplays, original scores and a few other categories:

Best Sequences

The elevator sequence in Drive.

The seven and one-half minute flashback in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, beautifully directed, photographed and scored.

In Moneyball, the game where the 2002 Oakland A's go for the American league record of 20 consecutive wins. I love the way director Bennett Miller uses actual film clips and recreations of certain situations in that game (these recreations are done remarkably well). I also love the way he alternates between crowd noise and silence on the soundtrack, as this game took its strange twists and turns. This sequence was one of several highlights from this notable film.

The Halloween night sequence in We Need to Talk about Kevin, with the use of Buddy Holly's song "Everyday." What a chilling moment!

The fire sequence in The Artist where Uggie the dog helps save the life of George Valentin.

The wildly inventive title sequence of The Adventures of Tintin. It's too bad the rest of the movie wasn't as inspired.

The first battle in War Horse, where the cavalry is seen emerging from a wheat field. Beautifully photographed by Janusz Kaminski and directed by Steven Spielberg.

The sequence in Hugo where we see how Georges Mélies made his movies - wonderful imagination by Martin Scorsese.

The scene at the café in Budapest, near the opening of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; this set the tone for the rest of this first-rate work.

Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Best Performances

Actors

The list of lead performances by actors in 2011 begins with Gary Oldman and his remarkably subtle turn in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Another wonderful performance was that of Brad Pitt in Moneyball; this is the most complete acting job to date. Also high marks for George Clooney in The Descendants, Michael Fassbender in Shame (as well as a fine turn in A Dangerous Method) and Jean Dujardin in The Artist. My final praise for a leading actor is for Antonio Banderas in The Skin I Live In. Banderas is cool and calculating in this role and beautifully underplays this intense character.

As for supporting roles, I loved Jonah Hill in Moneyball - what an engaging, charming performance! Ditto for Ben Kingsley in Hugo as well as Viggo Mortensen for A Dangerous Method. I was also impressed by Jeremy Irons and Kevin Spacey in Margin Call, Niels Arestrup in War Horse, Albert Brooks in Drive and Tom Hardy in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Finally, kudos to Robert Forster for his brilliant small turn in The Descendants as well as Kenneth Branagh in My Week With Marilyn.

Tilda Swinton in We Need to Talk about Kevin

Actresses

The finest performance I saw turned in by an actress this year was given by Tilda Swinton in We Need to Talk about Kevin. Intense and proudly fierce, she adds tremendous depth to the chilling film - you can't take your eyes off of her! Kirsten Dunst was first-rate in Melancholia; I'm hopeful this leads to more serious roles like this for this actress who is finally starting to receive much overdue praise. 

I also liked Keira Knightley in A Dangerous Method as well as Michelle Williams who was very enchanting in My Week with Marilyn.

As for supporting performances, I loved the work turned in by Jessica Chastain in The Tree of Life, Emily Watson in War Horse as well as Shailene Woodley in The Descendants and Bérénice Bejo in The Artist.

Directors

2011 was a wonderful year for cinema - just look at this list of directors who gave us some of the year's finest films. Let's start with Martin Scorsese for Hugo - who knew that the maker of Raging Bull and Goodfellas had this absolutely charming film in him? I also loved the light touch of Woody Allen in Midnight in Paris, a breezy comedy with several ideal performances. Pedro Almodovar gave us a chilling world of an obsessed doctor in The Skin I Live In that featured arguably the finest visual compositions of any film from 2011.

Lars Von Trier brought us a highly personal vision of the apocalypse with Melancholia, while Terrence Malick gave us creation and its aftermath with The Tree of Life. It was also nice to see David Cronenberg turn in a beautifully executed film such as A Dangerous Method, without resorting to violence, one of his trademarks in the past.

Lesser known directors that were at the top of their game in 2011 included Lynne Ramsey for We Need to Talk about Kevin - what dazzling images! - Bennett Miller for Moneyball, Tomas Alfredson for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist and J.C. Chandor for Margin Call.

Kudos also to Aki Kaurismaki for his delightful and ironic Le Havre, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne for their sometimes troubling, sometimes enchanting The Kid With a Bike and finally, high praise to Werner Herzog for his brilliant documentary Into The Abyss.

Screenplays

Brilliant job by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin adapting the script for Moneyball, taking a book based on statistics and finding the human story. Also a marvelous job by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughn, putting together a beautifully cohesive and well-structured script for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, based on the famous John Le Carré novel. Likewise an excellent job of structure for the adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steven Zaillian. 

Woody Allen gave us one of his most charming original scripts ever for Midnight in Paris while J.C. Chandor wrote a detailed screenplay that took us inside the inner doings of an investment firm in Margin Call. Michel Hazanavicius contributed a funny and touching original screenplay for The Artist. 

Other excellent adaptations include that of Lee Hall and Richard Curtis for War Horse, Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon for The Descendants and Christopher Hampton for A Dangerous Method.

Cinematography

The outstanding quality of work turned in by cinematographers not only in Hollywood, but also around the world, is amazing. Technology has changed dramatically in this field over the past decade, as many films are now shot digitally - think about it, just 15 years ago, who could imagine a movie not being shot on traditional film stock? Whatever the method selected, the visuals of films today are stunning.

Every year, we see as many as a half-dozen brilliant jobs turned in by cinematographers, but in 2011, the number was much higher. For me the finest cinematography was by Emmanuel Lubeszki for The Tree of Life. Lubeszki, who has been one of the two or three most brilliant cinematographers of the past ten years, always delivers outstanding work, but he topped his previous efforts with this film. Working with a genius of a visual storyteller such as Terrence Malick helped as the compositions are brillliantly composed and lit; an especially memorable image is a wide-angle shot of a field of sunflowers. This shot, just before the end of the film, is simply breathtaking.

Another superb job of cinematography was supplied this year by Janusz Kaminski for War Horse. Kaminski, who has been Steven Spielberg's regular cinematographer since Schindler's List in 1993, paints a lovely portrait of the English countryside during the First World War; the images are deeply saturated, as though he were recreating Technicolor from the films of 50 and 60 years ago. The final images of a burnt orange sky and a golden sunset are straight out of Gone With the Wind.

Jeff Cronenweth set a cool tone for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, capturing the gloomy blues and grays of a Swedish winter. Given the depravities of the film's characters, Cronenweth's work instantly gives the viewer the perfect visual feel, helping us understand the behavior of everyone in the film. 

Robert Richardson simply dazzled the eye with his work for Hugo. The opening scene in the train station is marvelous and I love the saturated golds of the clocks at the station as well as the deep blues of the costumes. 

Manuel Alberto Claro had to present a visual tone for a marriage ceremony in a darkly lit country club as well as that of a mysterious planet in Melancholia and he was up to the challenge. I loved the lighting of the wedding scenes outside at night as well as the bluish tones of the planet. 

Of course, only one individual can win the Academy Award for cinematography, but I think all five of these craftsmen deserve an award this year!

Other very impressive work was turned in by Jose Luis Alcaine for The Skin I Live In; Wally Pfister for Moneyball; Hoyte van Hoytema for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; Seamus McGarvey for We Need to Talk about Kevin (the bright colors of the house are especially ironic, a nice touch); Peter Suschitzky for A Dangerous Method; Newton Thomas Sigel for Drive and Sean Bobbitt for his cool look of corporate Manhattan in Shame.

Original Score

I will write a separate post on this very soon- 2011 marked a return to the symphonic score. While I have nothing against electronic scores, it is the composer who writes for a full symphony that generally writes the loveliest themes.

Briefly then, two scores stood head and shoulders above the competition this past year. The first was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, composed by Alexandre Desplat. While Desplat did incorporate some of John Williams' previous themes for the Harry Potter franchise into his work, he did compose two lovely original themes and gave this film a regal and accomplished musical setting. This is an outstanding score!

The second score that reached the top in 2011 was that of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by Alberto Iglesias. This is a subdued score that perfectly suits the moodiness of this Cold War spy drama. The music picks up on the emotions of the characters in a most subtle fashion; the score never announces itself. This is a marvelously complex work from Iglesias.

Other excellent scores were written by John Williams for War Horse (bless him, at 79 years of age he is still able to turn out such a lyrical piece of work), Howard Shore with a charming, lilting score for Hugo;  Mychael Danna for Moneyball and Ludovic Bource who beautifully captured the feel of the silent film scores of the 1920s with his work for The Artist.

Other scores that had some effective moments were composed by Clint Eastwood for J. Edgar, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Johnny Greenwood for We Need to Talk about Kevin.

And finally... a few of my favorite movie quotes from 2011

"You have your mother's eyes." - Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) to Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe)- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

"Speak as you might to a young child or a golden retriever. It wasn't brains that got me here, I can assure you of that." - John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) to Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) - Margin Call

"Sometimes you have to do something terrible just to go on living." - Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) to Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) - A Dangerous Method

"Nothing is genuine anymore." - Control (John Hurt) to George Smiley (Gary Oldman) - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

"How can you not be romantic about baseball?" - Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) to Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) - Moneyball

Scorsese's Love Letter to Early Cinema

Hugo is a dazzling visual treat that tells the charming story of how a little boy helped rescue the career of Georges Mélies, one of the founding fathers of cinema in the 20th century. Martin Scorsese has given us a marvelous cinematic present with this work, delivering a message that like clockwork, our dreams and passions will be in fine working order at the end of the day. Charming and ever-delightful, this is one of the finest films of this year - as well as the past few years.

Shot in Real 3-D, the film is about a 12-year old boy named Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) who resides at a train station in Paris in 1930. He lives there as an orphan, after his father died in a fire, leaving one of his uncles to take him in at the station, so he could wind the various clocks at that building. Hugo has to steal pastries and fruit from vendors at the station to survive, ensuring a constant surveillance from the Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen, in a subdued performance) and his eager doberman.

One day, Hugo is held by Georges (Ben Kingsley), who operates the station's toy store. Georges calls Hugo a thief and demands that he give back all the various tools he has been taking from him. As Hugo returns some of these, Georges also sees that the boy has a small notebook with numerous drawings, the most intriguing of which are of a human face, each one slightly different, so that when he flips through the pages in a hurry, the face moves as in a motion picture. Georges seizes the book, much to the disappointment of Hugo.

This is critical scene in the film, as we see that Hugo has been stealing tools in order to fix an automaton, a robot that his father and he had been working on for some time. Now following his father's death, the need to repair this robot - and thus learn of an important detail that will open up a new world to Hugo - is  a driving factor in his life. When he soon meets Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), a similarly-aged young girl who is Georges' goddaughter, Hugo will find the missing tool to repair the automaton and realize his dreams.

This sets things up for one of the most delightful scenes in the film, as Isabelle has the heart-shaped key that is the final piece needed to operate the automaton. The machine comes to life, slowly creating an amazingly detailed drawing of an image from the famous film, A Trip to the Moon, directed by George Mélies, who was celebrated for his amazing work on hundreds of films decades earlier, but who then suffered a career downfall and is presumed dead. It turns out he did not die, but is indeed Georges, the owner of the toy store. The drawing that Hugo and Isabelle take to Georges will unlock the mystery of his career.

The film, up to that point a marvelous tale of Hugo's trials and tribulations at the train station, now takes on a new identity, that of Martin Scorsese's love of early cinema, especially that of Mélies. Scorsese goes to great lengths - along with his brilliant production designer Dante Ferretti - to bring to life what Mélies' cinematic work must have looked like. This sequence, showing rehearsals of actors costumed as everything from ghosts to pirates to oversized crustaceans, is simply delightful. Scorsese goes on to show us how some of these scenes were filmed and edited and the result is sheer, unadulterated admiration of Scorsese's love for the trailblazing work of Mélies.

A note on the Real 3D process in this film; it works beautifully and is rarely used to call attention to itself. Speaking simply as a viewer, it's also a lot of fun, especially in the opening sequence, when you are positive that snowflakes from the Paris winter are going to land in your lap - they're that close. Even small pieces of dust are shown flying through the train station and boy, does that doberman look threatening in the foreground of several shots - watch out! The 3D is a lovely addition to this film not only in a surface level way, but also an emotional way, as when we see Hugo emerge from behind the giant clock at the station, looking and feeling quite inconsequential. Leave it to Scorsese to bring 3D technology to a peak, at least so far.

Scorsese has been reunited with several of his favorite collaborators here and what craftsmanship they bring to this film! The cinematography by Robert Richardson is brilliantly accomplished, the costumes by Sandy Powell are just right, the editing by Thelma Schoonmaker is seamless and the lovely score by Howard Shore is very sweet and touching. All of these artists will surely receive Oscar nominations as will Feretti, who seems to me at least, to be a lock for an Academy Award. It's the contributions of these supremely talented individuals along with Scorsese's confident and usual technically proficient direction that add so much to the enjoyment of this film.

So yes, Hugo is a superb film on a visual level, but it is also an enchanting story beautifully told by Scorsese that will enthrall a wide range of audiences. "They'd never seen anything like it before," Isabelle tells Hugo, when recalling the audience reaction to an early film of Mélies. No doubt, you'll be sharing a similar thought after viewing Hugo.

I can't wait to see it again!


P.S. One final note on the performance of Ben Kingsley as George Mélies. This is a touching, lovely, bittersweet turn by the great actor and one of his best. His characterization is one that carries a lot of emotional weight with it and Kingsley finds the perfect balance that helps this film find its grace and captivating appeal.