A spiritual journey

Rating: 9/10 (4 March 2017)

Fantastic stuff by Scorsese again. Just downright beautifully shot, excellent direction and beautiful cinematography and very compelling. Lately I have been struggling to connect with modern day Hollywood films, whether it be La La Land, Manchester by the sea, Moonlight etc. Arrival got closest to making me care for the protagonist but not enough. I was never satisfied with my emotional connect to any or all of the characters of the said films. Silence showed me that I could care, I felt strong emotional bonds with almost all of the characters in the film, directed by the steady and unwavering hand of Martin Scorsese whose direction is the real star in the film. The rest do a decent job, Andrew Garfield gives career best performance here and is trying very hard but still not good enough to shoulder this movie on his own and there are a lot of solo scenes and his performance was good but not great. I could see a lot of parallels between this and Scorsese's Last Temptation of the Christ, like Garfield's Sebastian saw himself as Jesus figure of sorts, the ideology of pain and suffering brings you closer to god and similar moral dilemmas whether faith is more important than people's lives, a very emotional and spiritual experience throughout.
Even Scorsese's greatest hits B side film is better than every film of last year. It's a shame that this was not nominated, it's not only a good film but a memorable one, it's no Seventh Seal but Scorsese doesn't ape Bergman he asks different questions and while not as philosophical but it still has a place in the pantheon of religion and spirituality based cinema something which the recent Noah just failed to do, always a very hard subject. It's amazing how Scorsese is able to maintain this level at 74, outdoing every one of his much younger peers, I hope he lives a long healthy life and continues providing us with good cinema, 2016 was in my recent memory one of the weakest years of non commercial Hollywood cinema almost SAVED by Scorsese. 8.5/10.