Great for the cognoscenti, rubbish for the rest of us plebs.

Rating: 1/10 (28 December 2019)

Those who watch films for their meaningful content will probably like this, as will those who value the supposed brilliance of direction, production, customary and all the other flummery that goes with arty film making.
Unfortunately, I value none of this. What I want is a good story, well acted, well scripted, well directed and with no pretension to be more than good entertainment; I also like there to be little in the way of background noise masquerading as a 'meaningful' score.
"Silence" fails on most of my criteria for being a watchable film. The story is weak and actually makes little sense, with Catholic priests from Portugal wandering around medieval Japan and having no trouble chatting to the natives - highly improbable. The acting does not really match the times and the direction is clearly a 20th century notion of what 17th century Japan was all about. The script likewise. The only bonus was the absence of the usually ubiquitous background noise.
"Silence" is a film heavy on 'meaningful' scenes and symbolism and utterly lacking in attraction to a normal, that is a bog standard film going, audience. It is slow and turgid. Frankly after less than 45 minutes I had no idea what the point was and I was bored rigid, so I gave up. It is clearly some sort of commentary on medieval religious ideas and activities but I'd much rather hear about such things from expert historians than pretentious film makers.
Forget that it has Liam Neeson in the cast, he's been hardly seen other than a brief appearance at the very start. Ciaran Hinds likewise appeared very early on and most of the rest of the cast seem to be unknown, at least to western viewers, Japanese. Perhaps these Japanese actors are great stars in their own land but they made little impression on me.
Those who have seen it will no doubt be split into 2 camps - those wowed by the cinematic genius of Scorcese and those, like me, who simply want a good film to watch. The first lot will give it 9s and 10s, the second anything from 4 down to 1. I award it 1 as I couldn't even find it reasons to watch it for more than 45 minutes.