Review of Silence (2017) by Brandon W — 28 Jun 2017

Silence is directed and co-written by Martin Scorsese, and it stars Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, and Liam Neeson in a historical drama about two priests that went over to Japan to rescue one of their priests and help spread Christianity throughout Japan where it's forbidden there.

Other then The Prince of Egypt and Noah, I never found a religious film that I really enjoyed a lot. Risen got the right idea of how to make a good religious film and succeed at it, but it wasn't a great one and it didn't stick out for me like Prince of Egypt or Noah did.

So I was pretty interested to see a talented director like Martin Scorsese to do a religious film, and so for renting this for free for special occasions, I certainly didn't waste on it as Silence is definitely one of the best religious films that I've seen.

Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver are fantastic in this, and when it's basically Andrew Garfield's story in the film, he gives his all whether it be something he kept doing for a long time, or he gets emotionally exhausted when he's trying to talk to God to help him, and he receives no answer back.

Liam Neeson is also pretty great in it, even if he's not in the film that much. The story is really interesting as I had no idea about where it's going, and it's interesting to see what Japan is like during the 1600s, even if it doesn't seem to be a good time for Christians in that time period.

The writing by Martin Scorsese and Jay Cocks is really good that understands about how religion is done in the right way for films, and you see two perspectives that don't share the same religion together, which you understand both of them of where they're coming from, which it could've easily been something out of a PureFlix film where the person that doesn't have share the same beliefs as the main character does is a villain and it's done in a hateful way, which this one doesn't necessarily have a villain, but it's not done in a way that you wanted this person to die.

The runtime being 161 minutes long can be iffy for some viewers and the pacing is a bit slow, but it's never boring to me as it's paced very well, and there's never a scene that I thought could've been out of the film, which is interesting for the fact that Scorsese's previous film being The Wolf of Wall Street that is one of the most craziest films in years, and his next one being a slow one.

Silence is a fantastic film that I'm glad it's as good as it could've been when the director has been trying to get this film done right in more than 20 years.