by Matthew Waldron

Between the two productions are 18 years, but Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Silence (2016) still resonate as if created for a double-bill as equally complex examples of the full spectrum cinema can produce regarding faith. FULL DISCLOSURE: I’m a practicing Catholic. I attend mass at a Jesuit parish and even last Spring took communion from Father James Martin who served as the Jesuit-adviser for Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver in preparation for their roles as Portuguese Jesuits in Silence. Accordingly, its (agonizingly delayed) release this past winter ended up one of the few genuinely transcendent experiences I’ve felt watching a film for the first time - not since Saving Private Ryan had I been so irresistibly transported by a film to a place I did not want to arrive at. And as I left the theater I struggled to balance the sincere joy I felt having just finished another Scorsese film with the existential, spiritual uncertainty Silence challenges every viewer to inevitably confront.