After more than 25 years, Martin Scorsese finally completed Silence last year, his adaptation of the homonymous Japanese novel written by Endo Shusaku and a real passion project for the master filmmaker behind other religious films such as The Last Temptation of Christ and Kundun. On this occasion, Scorsese explores the brutal reason why Christianity was never established as one of the popular religions in Japan.
Scorsese's team changed over the years and, finally, Mexico's Rodrigo Prieto had the opportunity to be the cinematographer of the project, once he started a working relationship with the director in The Wolf of Wall Street. In mid-February, Prieto - who at the time was nominated for the Academy Award (that eventually was taken home by La La Land's Linus Sandgren) - visited Mexico City in order to promote the release of Silence; I had the chance to talk with him for some minutes and since the film is out today on Blu-ray and DVD, here's a video with part of said conversation.
We talk about how he contributed to a project that Scorsese developed for almost three decades, the sequence that emotionally affected him the most, the fascinating themes of the film, and the two Japanese movies from the fifties that he had to watch as visual references.