Silence review: The passion (and the tedium) of Martin Scorsese

There is an attitude that hitherto unruly children adopt when it comes time for the biology teacher to address “human reproduction”. They pull themselves together, quieten down and furrow brows to confirm how grown up they are about the subject.

Martin Scorsese is on similar best behaviour for his (dread phrase) long- cherished adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel concerning crises of faith in 17th-century Japan.

Eager to treat such a sensitive topic with respect, the director sandbags the camera, sedates the editing and allows no sharp noises to disrupt the sound design. Oh, for a shot of Andrew Garfield's face reverse-zoomed to the strains of Gimme Shelter.

Adapted with exhausting faithfulness from Endo's prose, Silence may appeal to those for whom faith remains an everyday concern. It struck me as a rigorous, sincere interrogation of a spiritual dilemma I couldn't care less about.

We begin with a promising image of decapitated heads on mist-shrouded spikes. An establishing scene goes further to disingenuously promise something in the vein of Apocalypse Now. Sebastião Rodrigues (Garfield) and Francisco Garrpe (Adam Driver), two Portuguese Jesuits, discuss the fate of their mentor Father Cristóvão Ferreira (Liam Neeson) with a senior official (Ciarán Hinds, in an effective cameo).

After initially tolerating the Christian faith, the Japanese now persecute believers and torture the missionaries into apostasy. Rumours abound that Ferreira has renounced the faith and gone native. Rodrigues and Garrpe can’t believe it, but agree to visit Japan and discover the truth. The initial menace gives way to suffocating didacticism as the regime closes in upon them.

Scorsese is incapable of complete visual stoicism. Rodrigo Prieto's camera locates inevitable shadows of Akira Kurosawa, but it is Kenji Mizoguchi – and Ugestu in particular – we think of when watching boats weave through forbidding inland waterways. Not for the first time, Scorsese utilises computer-generated images that never look like anything other than computer-generated images. The music is subdued to the point of irrelevancy.

It soon becomes clear that this is Rodrigues’s story and, while Garfield is effective at bleeding inner torment, Driver’s awkward charisma would surely have suited the central role better.

Mind you, any actor would struggle with the linear, unyielding decline that the script demands of Rodrigues. These characters are defined solely in terms of their relationship to God and the protagonist is heading inexorably towards a potential divorce with his deity. Will he be Christ or will he be Judas?

That crisis reaches its head during a long showdown between Rodrigues and Ferreira. His face gaunt, his voice choked, Neeson is in excellent form as a man weighed down by his own compromises. Endo’s discussion of the ways Japanese followers misunderstood the Christian faith read well on the page.

Unfortunately, Jay Cocks’s script makes no effort to dramatise the debate. Yawning stretches of dialogue are intoned while the camera sits dutifully still, like that student listening to explanations of the seminal vesicles.

One is reminded of the moral dilemmas in Graham Greene novels that seem like no dilemma at all to those outside the Christian faith. Should a man speak ill of God if it means saving the lives of innocent citizens? This doesn’t seem like a question worth asking. It is certainly not worth asking at this length.