>Crises and Faith and Filmmaking
>Silly Assassin’s Creed gets religion more than the ponderous and punishing Silence does.
>artin Scorsese’s Silence almost offers a perfect allegory for godlessness in the age of Gawker and BuzzFeed. Set in the 17th century, the film depicts Japan’s persecution of Christian missionaries and converts. It follows two young Portuguese Jesuits, Father Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver), on a search for their mentor, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), who is missing in Japan and rumored to have renounced his faith.
>The first images portray the crucifixion of several Japanese Christians at oceanside hot springs (“hells”). These multiple Gethsemanes seem to be surreal hallucinations revealing the cost of faith; they unmistakably evoke recent ISIS atrocities. It looks as if Scorsese is conveying a Catholic’s nightmare of what can go wrong in a secular world. This opening is powerful but also disorienting. As the story moves further away from contemporary political parallels and into the esoteric history of Christians in 17th-century Japan, the cool-tempered, drawn-out series of interrogations and torments is bewildering.
>Based on a novel by Shusaku Endo and a 1971 film by Masahiro Shinoda, Silence could easily have been titled “Quest,” but Scorsese’s stress on the noncommunication between man and God gives the title “Silence” a particularly disturbing meaning. (The silence is symbolized in part by Father Ferreira’s absence from his former students, which leads to an ironic plot twist.) There’s a sense of career isolation here, despite the usual hype about this film having been decades in gestation. (How many “passion projects” can a Hollywood mogul like Scorsese claim?)
Based Armond: "Scorsese's Silence not golden but Assassin's Creed is stupid-terrific"
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>Silence reveals Scorsese’s difficulty in maintaining faith and tradition in a world gone mad — the constant Catholic condition — yet this personal and social dilemma gets drowned out by his ponderous religiosity and his movie-brat distractions.
>Agony by agony, Silence imitates the classic films about religious intolerance and spiritual doubt: Father Rodrigues and Father Garupe hide in tall ferns from avenging warlords, evoking Sternberg’s Anatahan (1953); their witnessing of enslavement recollects Mizoguchi’s Sansho the Bailiff (1954); their surprise at the Japanese converts’ devotion recalls Borzage’s The Big Fisherman (1959); Rodrigues’s questioning by a devious old samurai (Issey Ogata) is a twist on Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest (1951); a recurring Judas figure representing abject mankind brings to mind Buñuel’s Simon of the Desert (1965); an icon of enduring faith references Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987); even Neeson’s appearance unfortunately brings to mind Batman Begins (2005). Yet none of these references ultimately increases our understanding of today’s spiritual and cultural crisis; these scenes are inscrutable, as though a movie buff were citing a mixed-up catechism.
>After the genuine internal journey of Mean Streets (1973), which looked at Roman Catholicism among urban American hooligans, Scorsese never again showed suffering; he hid his personal dilemma behind violent macho bravado. (Raging Bull’s religious overtones were portentous and irrelevant to the film’s egotistical flourishes.) This time, Scorsese tries an obscure religious perspective, using a more composed, dignified, “classical” style, which makes this a religious movie without the fervor of either a penitent or a convert. There’s one great shot in which Rodrigo Prieto’s camera tilts up from a boat in churning seas to the sun in clouds, but even this is an image of confusion.
Prepare for Sup Forums to suddenly treat Assassin's Creed as a masterpiece.
>This film about spirituality and faith suffers from the lack of both. Scorsese wallows in all manner of cruel attacks against faith — unlike Hacksaw Ridge and unlike Sansho the Bailiff. When he repeatedly subjects Father Rodrigues (and the audience) to the blasphemy of stepping on a Christ icon, it feels like self-flagellation, at odds with the effort to defy contemporary Hollywood nihilism. Father Rodrigues respects Japan’s “hidden Christians” for believing “the promise that their suffering would not end in nothingness but in salvation,” yet Scorsese shows that faith in words only. Instead, one landscape nearly reproduces the sinister cover of Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy album; perhaps Scorsese has never heard Morrissey’s “I Have Forgiven Jesus.”
>Silence takes a juvenile approach to what Ingmar Bergman already explored in his Sixties “Silence of God” trilogy: Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1963), and The Silence (1963). Those films, famous at one time on the long-gone art-movie circuit, depicted the spiritual agony of Christians in the modern, secular world. But Scorsese, belonging to the draft-dodging generation of movie-brat auteurs (Coppola, Spielberg, DePalma), seems to have lost touch with the cultural basis of Bergman’s spiritual questioning, as well as Fellini’s, Rossellini’s, and the subversive Buñuel’s.
>Just as the increasingly faithless movie-brats have taken simplistic, anti-West, progressive stances on political history and gone silent on the contemporary persecution of Christians, Silence shows little real interest in the ISIS and Taliban allegory it initially presents. Silence becomes a weirdly punishing chronicle of the tests that Christians endure to hold on to their faith in the face of assaults from enemies. Scorsese naïvely and sentimentally equates this troubling history — and its all-too-modern counterpart in the Middle East and elsewhere — with a crisis of the heart.
>id anybody go to see Assassin’s Creed, the perfectly disreputable antidote to Silence? With less gravitas than Scorsese, director Justin Kurzel adapts the eponymous violent video game and gets right to the point of religious and moral conflict in this postmodern, medieval, gothic sci-fi flick about the descendant of a heretic from the Spanish Inquisition and the social scientist who experiments with eradicating mankind’s violent instincts.
>Kurzel made the surprisingly effective Macbeth (2015), with Michael Fassbinder and Marion Cotillard, and reteams them here (Fassbinder is Cal Lynch, heir of the heretic Aguilar, and Cotillard is Sofia, humanitarian daughter of a fascist tycoon). Going from the 12th century to the 21st century, Kurzel does variations on themes from Macbeth, and lots of this grab-bag nonsense is as provocative as it is silly.
>There’s the usual video-game confusion about history and ethics, giving the Nietzschean quote “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” more emphasis than any scriptural quote. But this video-game nihilism also offers an Orwellian cautionary tale — A Clockwork Orange morphs into Minority Report and Ghost Rider with a constantly moving camera, cross-cut parkour fighting, furious action, and a relentless exercise in montage.
>The crucifixion postures and Christian allegories flying around in Assassin’s Creed at least show genuine filmmaking intelligence — plus, a franchise-ready, impressively physical performance by Fassbinder that’s almost worthy of Zack Snyder. Inept Ron Howard made it easy to hate the abuse of religious faith in The DaVinci Code but Kurzel shows stupid-terrific skill, without Scorsese’s self-importance.
nationalreview.com
>implying it isn't
Based Armond BTFO of Catholic-guilt cuck Marty and recognizes Kurzel's Assassin's Creed as the masterpiece of contemporary vidyakina that it is.
I don't know man, I thought this was pretty incoherent but the Scorcese critique was dope, so many movies I need to check out. Still haven't seen Silence, will do so this weekend I hope.
It's not a masterpiece, but when I made threads about this movie saying it wasn't bad, I got plenty of posts saying the movie was shit and I was retarded. Now that Armond White assured us the movie was good, Sup Forums is going to love it.
Sup Forums still hates Hidden Figures.
Armond's persuasion doesn't work 100% of the time.
Yeah but Assassin's Creed doesn't have overt "SJW themes."
No, but it's "vidyakino," which Sup Forums will hate no matter what.
Assassin's Creed and Hidden Figures are both not terrible, but not good either
Is this the man who thought Jack and Jill was amazing
>Prepare for Sup Forums to suddenly treat Assassin's Creed as a masterpiece.
>"suddenly"
It was always a Kino.
I want Armond to offer his ciriticism to WW2
Yes
>nationalreview.com
isn't this an Alt-right propaganda site?
>Sup Forums still hates Hidden Figures.
>Armond's persuasion doesn't work 100% of the time.
>Implying Sup Forums has seen it.
Imo the only problem with Hidden figures is they obvious oscar pandering.
Other than that, is just another "black" movie.
t. embryo
National Review actively campaigned against Trump during the election. It's the homebase of NeoCons.
I don't think most people on Sup Forums have even seen it.
>implying Sup Forumsirgins need to go see a movie to hate it
hownew.ru
>tfw Armond is a Trump supporter
Will his contrarian meme ever end? It's one thing to hate popular movies, it's another to be contrarian about politics, sexuality and religion.
Do you agree Sup Forums?
nationalreview.com
>It's one thing to hate popular movies, it's another to be contrarian about politics, sexuality and religion.
>Liking the winner of the presidential election is contrarian
>Being Christian is contrarian
>Being okay with homosexuality is contrarian
????
btw the movies he hates are shit and "contrarian" is the most reddit word ever
patrician
We had at least 10 threads on this last week.
Go look in the archives if you wants answers.
No one actually takes this guy seriously right?
...
>implying Sup Forums has seen most of those films
People here onto watch starshit and capeshit
Armond is a contrarian troll. He writes good review for bad movies, and bad reviews for good movies, just to piss off nerd-virgins.
He was removed from Rotten Tomatoes for it.
So is Sup Forums going to start hating silence now, these last couple days people were praising. I personally loved it, 3rd best film of the year. Manchester and aferim are 1st and 2nd respectively
The Armond White Method: Take the obvious factual objective value and appraisal of a film, reverse that position and include big words randomly with pseudo-philosophical nonsense to "argue" for what is obviously untrue. He is the most childish contrarian in the media currently, of course Sup Forums likes him. Adam Sandler movies are objectively shit and he writes that they are not, that is all you need to know about this corporate right wing shill piece of shit. "Hurr, durr, the self evidently garbage Asscreed movie is ACTUALLY deeper than Silence, directed by the greatest living director! XD!"
>the plebs hates what he does not understand
Have truer words ever been spoken?
>greatest living director
Godard isn't dead yet, pleb.
I'm not a fan of Armond White but I got red flags when I noticed that many (((Liberal media publications))) are loving Silence, and also that Sorcese directed the anti-Catholic the Last Passion of Christ.
If Silence was really a Catholic movie should have got The Passion of Christ treatment from the (((media))) and Scorsese banished from Hollywood like Mel Gibson
It wouldn't be bad if he was at least more subtle about his trolling, I can predict every movie he rates ever based on how high it's RT score is.
Thank you for proving my point.
Godard hasn't made a good movie in a long time, and, this is my opinion: he has never made a movie as good as one of Scorsese's best. The true pleb opinion is overrating French Wave tripe over the true cinema of France that preceded it with Marcel Carne and Jean Renoir. Godard is pleb shit, in my opinion.
>many (((Liberal media publications))) are loving Silence
What are you talking about? Everybody's giving it mediocre reviews.
Good, I was kinda hoping for Asscreed to be good.
I'll definitely downl- er, I mean, buy the blu-ray now if Armond says it's better than Silence.
Message de salutations: Prix suisse / remerciements / mort ou vif (2015) is the best kino Godard has made.
And I agree, most of the New Wave shit is "tripe." Godard didn't come into his own until the 80s.
Post the pleb movie you love that he destroyed
Reminder that this is the average Armond shill
Actual quote from Armond: "But Martin Scorsese’s latest protracted remake replaces their conviction and originality with a lapse of cinematic faith.".....Firstly it's not a remake in any way. but you know what, the point here is not even to intellectually entertain such rubbish, it's just trolling bait bullshit.
3 star reviews count as positive.
>so many green lines
Okay, Neo, you can come out.
>Firstly it's not a remake in any way
You're joking right? What a fucking pleb
letterboxd.com
>impressively physical performance by Fassbinder that’s almost worthy of Zack Snyder.
AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
>dislikes plebsrcese flick
>prefers gibson and malickino
You are aware that people can say adapt a book different times and it's not necessarily a remake. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Fincher is not a remake of the prior film, it's another adaptation. There's a subtle difference there.
>Disney shills getting buttinfuriated AGAIN
Snyder is good, deal with it
...
>Firstly it's not a remake in any way
Jesus fucking christ
It's not a remake, dumbfucks.
In all seriousness, his ISIS connections are completely pulled out of left field. Besides that his analysis is pretty respectable, before it falls into usual Armond clickbait. Maybe Silence was just 2deep4him.
Does it matter at this point? Sup Forums is always wrong
>just to piss off nerd-virgins.
>He was removed from Rotten Tomatoes for it.
Humm...
To elaborate on this:
He was removed from rotten tomatoes because he gave a "rotten" review to Toy Story 3, thus taking away its perfect Fresh status.
That's not a joke. He was really removed over Toy Story 3
>He was really removed over Toy Story 3
You can't douse the Mouse
Fuck I knew I should've watched assassin's Creed instead of Rogue One
Damn it. Fucking Sup Forums told me it wasn't kino
>reddit spacing
Oh look
It's YOU again
dumb frogposters
Based Armond King of Sup Forums nails it again.
He judges ambitious epics in the context of other ambitious epics, and he judges dumb action movies in the context of other dumb action movies.
Why can't moronic Redditors understand this unbelievably simple concept?
Jesus. Toy Story 3 wasn't even that good. It was aggressively mediocre.
He was removed because the fanboys caused such an outrage, the entirety of Reddit threw a fit and RT had to either get rid of Armond are lose out on all that Reddit ad revenue, so it wasn't a hard choice.
He's still on RT though.
>It's contrarian to support the winner
Am I being meme'd on?
Source?
They added him back after the Toy Story nostalgia fags grew up and stopped caring.
EVERYTHING GOOD IS BAD. EVERYTHING BAD IS GOOD.
AM I COOL YET?
Or maybe he just didn't make retarded torture porn.
Kek these Toy Story 3 bad reviews are funny.
moviemartyr.com
>movie wasn't adult enough
>andy plays with the toys at the end
>insensitive race and gay jokes
Because they're pseuds and it's important for pseuds to always give the appearance of culture and intelligence. They can't have favorable opinions of low entertainment or it spoils their image.
>It's an 'Armond haters *autistic screeching*' thread
Will they ever learn?
...
Did he take a historical event and give moire modern values to the protagonist and the antagonist who by all means a better person than the protagonist is demonised?
yep. the pleb movies he dislikes are shit, deal with it
and as for what he does like, besides that list that gets posted everytime you can actually look him up on rt yourself, he is patrician.
Wait Hidden Figures is patrician?
I haven't seen it, have you?
Yes.
Armond White HAS to be the user behind that "dishonest movies" meme. He likes honesty over anything else
>likes honesty
>likes Hidden Figures
???
What if this user is actually Armond and he's trying to pin that failed meme on somebody else?
0_o
Haven't seen it, maybe it was honest. Maybe at the end one character looks at the camera and says: "this was just racebait oscarbait you damn fools, the white men were the real heros!"
>believing in god
>current year
lel
What do you believe in that gives you purpose and your life meaning?
Myself
Sup Forums memes.
It's The Last Temptation of Christ
Poe's law at work. You've memed about Armond for so long that you've actually convinced idiots that he's a good critic instead of a joke. It's like Sup Forums and Fantano.
Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregate, morons.
Corrected.
Literally none of the detractors ITT have actually tried to respond to the content of his review. Try harder, redditors.
What does that have to do with removing his reviews from the site?