Silence

Silence (2016) is Martin Scorsese's historical drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Two Portuguese Jesuits sail in secret to Japan after word reaches them that their teacher, Father Ferreira, has renounced his faith.

Andrew Garfield plays Father Rodrigues; Adam Driver is his companion Garupe, and Liam Neeson the mentor they hope to find. The country they land in has outlawed Christianity. Hidden believers are hunted, tortured, and ordered to step on an image of Christ to prove they have given it up. The priests hide among fishing villages, where ordinary people gamble their lives just to shelter them. Slowly Rodrigues runs into the question that breaks him: why does heaven stay quiet while his flock is led to die?

Scorsese chased this project for nearly three decades. It comes from Shūsaku Endō's 1966 novel, shot in Taiwan by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who built a hushed, fog-bound world where silence itself does the work of a score. This is slow, heavy filmmaking about belief and doubt, far from the Scorsese of the gangster pictures. Stream Silence (2016) online on iFILM.