Review of Silence (2017) by Kevin M — 22 Jan 2017

I've always had mixed feelings about Martin Scorsese. I've found his older movies overrated, and most of his recent entries to be anywhere from great to incredible. Unfortunately, Silence falls well below his modern standards.

Clocking in at 2 hours and 40 minutes, it's drastically overlong and most of the material is dry. For a film tackling such a daring subject, there are almost no twists or exciting moments, and finds itself moving in an extremely slow and restrained pace.

This is a problem for a film as long as Silence because it almost put me to sleep. Andrew Garfield is excellent in the lead but Liam Neeson is very oddly cast as an elder priest. There are also a few very odd scenes littered throughout.

One for example, is when a character is contemplating officially renouncing his faith as a Christian, and God literally speaks to him and tells him to go ahead and do it. It's a creative choice that I think stuck out like a sore thumb in a film that's so restrained and subtle.

I respect Scorsese for bringing loyalty to religion to the big screen, but it ended up being, for the most part, a dud.