Liam Neeson/Silence
Two young Portuguese Jesuit priests (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) travel to Japan in the mid-17th century in search of their teacher, Padre Ferreira (Liam Neeson). It’s rare to find a film not based on Star Wars, where Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) is the apprentice of the Jedi (Liam Neeson). But jokes aside, this serious film does not set a major tone.
Martin Scorsese had long (very long) wanted to adapt Shusaku Endo’s novel, which had already been adapted once by Masahiro Shinoda.
Like many Japanese intellectuals of the time, the young director was extremely left-wing and wanted to take a deep dig at the capitalists entrenched in the government and, at the same time, awaken his fellow countrymen.
Surprisingly, after almost half a century, Scorsese’s film looks almost like a frame-by-frame remake of the Japanese classic: the reason for this is most likely simply the very careful attitude of both artists towards the author’s text. So careful that Scorsese seems to remove himself from the film.
The only thing that can be said with certainty is that the silence that pervades the very nature of Japan and its people is not what interests Scorsese; he is more interested in the silence of God.
Looking for interesting and new gambling games? They’re here Casino Click login
Matt Damon/The Great Wall
Two bearded Europeans (Matt Damon and Pedro Pascal) travel through the East to discover the secret of gunpowder, but soon they are forced to help Chinese warriors repel attacks by hellish creatures on the Great Wall.
The film brings together a cast of familiar faces: Tony Gilroy wrote the screenplays for the Jason Bourne spy thrillers starring Matt Damon, while Carlo Bernard and Doug Miro are the creators of the series Narcos, in which Pedro Pascal stars. However, they obviously decided to take a break on this international project and wrote an unpretentious fairy tale, and Zhang Yimou agreed to direct it because he had nothing from his own work to show children — all his films are too adult for them.
The result is a noisy blockbuster, similar to the lost kung fu treasure “Dragon Sword,” only with a fantasy twist and a much larger budget. It’s an Asian “Marvel,” where flying warriors replace superheroes.
Bonus: Cosmo Jarvis
The new adaptation of James Clavell’s novel has already been compared to Game of Thrones, although it is more similar to the series Black Sails — John Blackthorn (Cosmo Jarvis) finds it increasingly difficult to hide the fact that he is a pirate, and the water scenes are impressive in their scale.
The main difference between the new series and the previous one is that the story no longer revolves around the navigator. In the 1980 production, the authors did not even translate the Japanese dialogue at first, so that the audience would feel as disoriented as the main character.
Here, Blackthorn is immediately drawn into a complex intrigue involving the military commander Toronaga (Hiroyuki Sanada, who was also responsible for authenticity in the series), and the Japanese characters are given more screen time. In other words, as in the second Dune, the “white savior” trope has been deconstructed.
However, the series is not without its strange decisions. For example, the desire to scare viewers with Eastern cruelty — we have seen so many films about samurai that it is unlikely that anything can surprise us. And when the showrunners pass off English speech as Portuguese, they find themselves on the cutting edge of cringe.
Published by HOLR Magazine.