For all the cerebral piety and inward contemplation of Silence, the new movie by Martin Scorsese, there are more than trace elements of an adventure yarn: 17th-century Portuguese Jesuits sneak into Japan, where their religion is banned, searching for their missing leader. Our idealistic travellers (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) encounter dangerous weather, double-crosses, imprisonment and physical torture. For a film about a spiritual journey, it has its share of action.
There are plenty of films with friendly fathers, or clerics killed off as a device to kickstart a supernatural horror schlocker. What distinguishes Silence is that these devoted men are heroes. Men of the cloth are rarely leading men in adventure cinema, but there are a few titles that could be added to the priests-in-peril genre …
Black Robe (1991)
As Portuguese Jesuits were struggling in Japan, French Jesuits were having an equally rough ride in eastern Canada. Bruce Beresford’s remarkable adaptation of Brian Moore’s novel Black Robe depicts an uneasy alliance between early colonists and the Algonquian people. A young priest (Lothaire Bluteau) is guided from the few wooden shacks of the Quebec settlement to an even more remote and slush-besieged outpost amid the Huron tribes.
Cultural misunderstandings are eventually thawed by a burgeoning romance between Bluteau’s non-priestly companion and a young Algonquin woman – and by everyone’s desire to escape the Iroquois, who take an extremely dim view of trespassing.
Beresford’s film is, in the grand scheme of things, relatively progressive in its acceptance of other belief systems, but it does not shy away from majestic, snowy imagery of our lone, beleaguered beacon of light in a savage wilderness.
The Mission (1986)
Roland Joffé’s Jesuit tale is set 100 years after Silence, but may well be the most visually breathtaking of the lot. (Scorsese does take a shot at Joffé: the earlier film features an image of a crucifix in engulfed by water but this one has three.)
Jeremy Irons is a Spanish Jesuit hoping to spread the word to the Guaraní tribe of Latin America. At first, he is rejected, but, in time, his very pinko-hippie strain of Catholicism catches on. He is joined by a penitent ex-slaver (Robert De Niro) just in time for the 1750 Treaty of Madrid, which solidified borders between European empires.
Irons’ mission, a paragon of faith and industry, then suddenly finds itself under Portuguese rule, meaning his Guaraní are at risk of being carted off by slave traders. (The Jesuit elders have made a lesser-of-two evils choice: if they had not abandoned a few missions, the entire order would have been jeopardised.) What’s a holy man like Irons to do in times like this? Well, make a bloody last stand, of course. Luckily, he’s got Raging Bull on his team.
Despite The Mission’s inclusion on the Holy See’s 45 great films list, its conclusion isn’t that dissimilar to that of Predator.
The Exorcist (1973)
Forget what I said earlier about horror films, as The Exorcist defies categorisation. And, for a priest in peril, you can do no better than the eerie opening sequence of William Friedkin’s masterpiece, in which Max von Sydow’s Father Merrin wanders the bazaars and dig sites in Iraq looking for … something. You can tell he’s prepared to sacrifice himself for a noble good (just look at him sweat), and, as he stares down a spooky statue under the blazing sun, you know this is going to get nasty. Of course, not even he can withstand the pure evil of a pea-soup-barfing little girl using profanity with Mercedes McCambridge’s dubbed voice.
The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965)
Sometimes, it isn’t a priest from the rank-and-file who is the hero, it’s the holy father himself. There are many cinematic pontiffs, but Rex Harrison was first to be a movie pope badass.
Carol Reed’s Cinemascope story about the painting of the Sistine chapel has is a sequence every bit as noteworthy as Charlton Heston’s chest. The behind-schedule Michelangelo (Heston) is summoned to explain himself to his patron, Pope Julius II (Harrison). However the pope doesn’t summon him to a cathedral, but to a battlefield – barking military orders one minute and pontificating on art the next.
Clearly, this is meant as a metaphor for the battle of wills between these two headstrong men, but it’s a fascinating visual reminder about seats of power that have been sanitised by modernity.
Of Gods and Men (2010)
Xavier Beaumont’s movie is not set centuries ago, nor is it a supernatural fantasy. It is set very much here and now (well, mid-1990s Algeria) and pieces together the true story of French Trappist monks murdered by military forces. The monks are presented as mainstays of stability, offering medical services and a friendly face to the Muslim locals. The leader (Lambert Wilson) reads from the Qur’an as much Pascal’s Pensées. The local goons want them out, but they can’t abandon their villagers. Doubt, worry, faith and sacrifice boil up with extraordinary cinematic tension.
While it is hard to describe this film as anything other than tragic, a sequence in which the gentle and mostly elderly monks (a big night might include broth and classical music) battle a helicopter with choral chants is one of the more heroic moments – religious or secular – you are likely to see in any movie.
