Representing the Voice of Christ through Audiovisual Narrative in Endō Shūsaku’s and Martin Scorsese’s Silence

Martin Scorsese’s Silence (2016) is a modern example of an aesthetic creation that faithfully adapts Endō Shūsaku’s religious novel, Silence (沈黙). Based on the historical event of 17th century Christian persecution in Japan, Endō employs multiple narrative focalizations to depict the inner drama of an apostatized priest, while leading the reader to contemplate his faith from different perspectives. Scorsese expands and transforms the narrative strategy by employing multiple voice-overs with alteration, which creates an audiovisual gap. By prompting the audience to actively recall what they saw and heard during the film, the director guides them to witness the hidden aspects of the priest’s life. Notably, Scorsese also experiments with representing Christ’s voice, which the original novel depicts through audiovisual imagery, by using voice-over. While the director still opens the door to various interpretations, he makes it feel as if the voice was there not only with the priest but also with the audience, thus fulfilling the fundamental spirit of the novel. The purpose of this paper is to trace how Scorsese transformed Endō’s narrative form through audiovisual storytelling, and to derive a methodology for faithful-and-creative adaptation.