Silence (Blu-Ray + Digital HD)
Blu-Ray Reviews | Mar 30th, 2017
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano, Ciarán Hinds, Liam Neeson
Written By: Jay Cocks, Martin Scorsese
Directed By: Martin Scorsese
Studio: Paramount
Buy On Amazon.com
Silence is the latest epic from Martin Scorsese starring Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and Liam Neeson. It’s the last in the unofficial trilogy of Scorsese’s faith films apparently. I thought I would check it out since it’s Scorsese but let’s just say this isn’t a movie I’d want to watch again.
The movie is about two Christian missionaries, Sebastião Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver), who travel to Christianity-banned Japan. They travel there because they are looking for their missing mentor (Liam Neeson), who was captured and imprisoned but also denounced his religion to stay alive. They eventually get captured as well and their faiths are tested.
I didn’t really know much about this movie going into it. I had a somewhat basic idea on what the story was but figured I’d watch this because it was Martin Scorsese. It was shot beautifully and screams EPIC. You can tell Scorsese put a lot effort, time and love into this and it shows. It was tough to watch sometimes since people were being set on fire or being tied up on crosses placed in the ocean, as the tide came in and drowned them. It was torturous to watch, especially those scenes. Kudos to the actors that had to sit up there and take waves in the faces just to get the shot.
But with all that said, I just felt the movie was too long, too slow and for me personally, boring. I’m not a religious person so I guess I couldn’t relate to the material but I’ve seen other religious movies and didn’t dislike them. I think this movie was trying to grab attention at the award season. Martin certainly deserved more recognition for this than what he got. Perhaps if this movie was edited down to about half the length, it would have been a little bit more compelling to me.
The main extra on the Silence Blu-Ray is just one, Martin Scorsese’s Journey Into Silence. That’s about 25 minutes long. Martin Scorsese, the cast, and co-writer Jay Cocks discuss the source material, the hardships of filming this, and things like that. It’s an interesting featurette and sort of made up like a documentary in a way. Pretty much Martin wanted to make this movie 30 years ago but wasn’t ready for it. I probably enjoyed watching this more than the movie itself.
I’m in the minority here but I didn’t care for Silence. It was long, boring and at times just painful to watch because of what was happening on the screen. Not my idea of good fun to watch for almost 3 hours. I guess I should have looked more into this movie before wanting to see it. I can respect and appreciate the look of the film and how it was shot, but the subject matter didn’t interest me much.
Features
Martin Scorsese’s Journey Into Silence
Audio
English DTS-HD MA 5.1
Video
Widescreen 1.85:1 Color
Bottom Line: A long, slow religious movie that I probably won’t watch again
Running Time: Too long but 160 mins
Rating: R
Extras Rating:
Overall Rating:
