The first half of my essay for the imminent Masters of Cinema Series DVD release, Masahiro Shinoda’s Silence (Chinmoku, 1971), can now be found here. I guess Eureka’s thinking is to offer those who purchase the release an added perk (beyond seeing the film itself, of course).
This was a fun essay to work on, drawing together various subjects–Japanese cinema, colonial history, postwar French Catholicsm, and Eastern versus Western thinking–that jostled together and formed interesting insights. I don’t know if every critic sees his or her own writing as part of a process of discovery (rather than simple elucidation), but I certainly do, and enjoyed delving into the world of the film.