'Silence' Early Buzz: Critics Weigh In On Martin Scorsese's Passion Project
Martin Scorsese has been working on Silence for literally decades now, and in just a few weeks we'll finally get to see the fruits of his labor. Unless, that is, you're one of the few lucky critics who've already had the chance to watch it. Yup, Silence has begun screening, and the first reactions are now rolling in. Get the Silence early buzz below.
Based on the novel by Shusaku Endo, Silence stars Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver as a pair of 17th century Portuguese Jesuit monks who travel to Japan in search of their mentor (played by Liam Neeson), who is reported to have committed apostasy. Also starring are Ciarán Hinds, Tadanobu Asano, Yosuke Kubozuka, and Issey Ogata.
Full-length reviews of Silence are still under embargo, so reactions so far have been limited to social media. These 140-character comments are necessarily less nuanced than an 800-word review would be. All that said, we can still get a general sense of the critical consensus building around this movie, and so far things are looking good. Really good. Like, "one of Scorsese's best" good.
I saw SILENCE twice today. First time, I was absorbed, impressed, moved. Second time, I was in tears. One of Scorsese's greatest films.
— Bilge Ebiri (@BilgeEbiri) November 30, 2016
Second screening revealed it to be one of Scorsese's most beautifully structured & composed films. And made me appreciate Neeson a lot more.
— Bilge Ebiri (@BilgeEbiri) November 30, 2016
SILENCE is beautiful and heartfelt. All Good Friday, as with most Scorsese. Very little Easter Sunday.
— Boo! McScreamy (@DrewMcWeeny) November 30, 2016
SILENCE is absolutely staggering. Deserves to be compared to the masterworks of Ingmar Bergman. A serious film about faith under fire.
— Joshua Rothkopf (@joshrothkopf) November 30, 2016
i found SILENCE urgent, moving, and momentous even as I kept wishing the padres would just go back home and call the proselytizing off
— Alan Scherstuhl (@studiesincrap) December 1, 2016
Since we're all sharing: SILENCE is an expertly crafted, severely morose crisis-of-faith drama. Stilted in parts but gorgeous and haunting.
— erickohn (@erickohn) December 1, 2016
Not everyone was quite as enamored, though.
Ok, real talk: Scorsese's SILENCE is frustrating
— jen yamato (@jenyamato) November 30, 2016
Since everyone is confessing, after only one viewing, this former Catholic schoolboy is agnostic toward SILENCE.
— Ed Gonzalez (@certified_ed) November 30, 2016
No movie gets total universal praise, so it seems a good sign that even the less positive responses to Silence are more lukewarm than outright cold. It's also promising that no one is mentioning an epidemic of terrible accents — that Silence trailer had me kind of worried, but maybe this means they work better in context or that they're just not bad enough to detract from otherwise strong performances. Or, you know, maybe the people who straight-up hated Silence are just keeping their opinions to themselves for now. We'll find out as more reactions and then full-on reviews start to surface.
In any case, expect this conversation to keep getting more complex and more interesting as more people join in. And definitely expect to keep an eye on this one during the awards race, if that's your kind of thing.
Silence is in theaters December 23.