SILENCE

Sometimes I run into a drought with this blog and can't think of anything to say.  I seemed to be in one earlier today, but this evening when we were going to watch another Sopranos episode (we skipped the one where Dr. Melfi got raped), we couldn't get the cable signal!  So I went out to see a movie instead.

I saw Martin Scorsese's slow but fairly powerful Silence at Canada Square. That's about a couple of Jesuits who go to Japan to track down Liam Neeson, a priest reported to have gone apostate.  As Jesuit movies go, mind you, I'd give the edge to Bruce Beresford's Black Robe just because of its Canadian scenery!

Andrew Garfield plays one of the Jesuits, who comes under pressure from a Japanese inquisitor to publicly recant his faith too. (This reminded me of Hacksaw Ridge, where Garfield was pressured to abandon his pacifism.) Neeson only turns up late in the movie, and I couldn't help thinking about his losing his wife Natasha Richardson and how that must have been like his character losing his Catholic faith.

Half-assed agnostic that I am, I identify with religious dissidents, whether they're Catholics facing a Japanese inquisition or people facing the Catholic inquisition.  Here the Japanese inquisitors had taken the course of making priests recant by executing their followers. (There's nobody lower than hostage takers!) I couldn't help thinking of the interrogation in Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is back in the news these days.  They say, "With power comes responsibility," but I say that power is the ability to hold other people responsible for your actions!  Those in power always have a rationale, you see...

Tuesday at opera rehearsal we blocked the rest of Carmen and started doing The Merry Widow. Peter also gave us tickets to sell.  When some guys brought out the Madonna statue (Mary, that is) for the pre-bullfight scene, it was slightly tilted, and Beatrice said, "Mary's drunk!"