Todos lo saben

A wedding brings a family together to exalt in celebration, the festivities overflowing with spirit, inhibitions let loose to praise.

But as guards are let down and passions erupt, covetous malfeasance clandestinely violates.

Soon it is known that kidnapping is afoot, and the identity of the perpetrator remains a bitter mystery.

Old school social relations call motives into question, as despondent candour joylessly obscures lucid trust.

Financial responsibility dismally beckons, a lifetime of hard work hauntingly underlying stoic sacrifice.

The past interrogatively echoes.

As the present crumbles astray.

Emergent futures contend in Todos lo saben indeed, as disturbing essentials anxiously prognosticate.

Hives of activity maddeningly posture before settling down with forlorn resignation.

Its characters are strong, compassionate, resilient, loving.

They don't only care for their immediate family, but seek the prosperity of their workforce as well.

Like a versatile community.

The film excels at presenting passionate logic, the overwhelming emotions that characterize sincere distress rationally generated with sober feeling.

Everything's understood with astute enough composure.

It matures like the vines its reels cultivate, coming of age in the mid-afternoon sun.

Storms may disrupt its smooth delicate maturation, but not without augmenting rough unique compelling flavour.

It examines religion without preaching, infidelities without scorn, science without authentication, loyalty forbidding dependence.

Even though characters seek just outcomes, it doesn't mean it's easy, and even though they have resources they can access, it doesn't mean alternative solutions are shelved.

Suspicions bluntly arise.

Level heads contemplatively acquiesce.

Like culture under seige.

Todos lo saben peacefully reckons.

Silence

There's a classic scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly that still stands out for me, the one where the bandit Tuco speaks with his brother Pablo the priest and they discuss the different lives they lead after having not seen one another for 9 years.

It doesn't end well.

But during their dialogue, Tuco states that there were only two choices for them when they were young and impoverished, to become a bandit or a priest, and that becoming a bandit was more challenging, harder, fraught with more pain and suffering.

Martin Scorsese's Silence offers Tuco a lengthier response than Pablo's, demonstrating the herculean composure required to work as a missionary under harsh conditions in a hostile land.

Set in the 17th century, fathers Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garupe (Adam Driver) travel to Japan to do what they believe is necessary to actively spread the word, while also searching for a famous fellow priest (Liam Neeson as Father Ferreira) who has supposedly lost his way.

They don't speak Japanese and are guided by a shifty alcoholic fisherperson (Yôsuke Kubozuka as Kichijiro) who leads them to a small coastal village where they begin their work.

Not easy by any means, their path, their calling, and since Japanese authorities are persecuting Christians, especially priests, old school style, because they're worried about the ways in which in a foreign religion is conflicting with their own buddhist traditions, Rodrigues and Garupe employ the utmost stealth to avoid detection.

But they're eventually found in different spots and Rodrigues must then run the gauntlet to prove his faith, to demonstrate his courage.

Intellectually, physically and spiritually.

Scorsese struggles a bit in territory he hasn't explored in a while (time for another viewing of The Last Temptation of Christ methinks), the excruciating isolation and gruesome personal struggle involved demanding a more contemplative ascetic humbling approach than that found in some of his recent films, this aesthetic captured at points but Silence isn't Tarkovsky, and the contrast introduced when the violence begins doesn't captivatingly diverge in a stunning juxtaposition.

He did prove he's quite sensitive with Hugo, but the first half of Silence would have benefitted from a less traditional approach, from longer more destitute not necessarily plot-related scenes skilfully blending hope and sorrow, scenes which would have become more emotionally pronounced as Rodrigues's life descended into chaos.

Into more familiar territory.

Still a thoughtful investigation of faith and the trials that await the spiritually bold.