page_title: Silence (2016 film)
section_title: Critical response
hierarchical_section_title: Silence (2016 film) / Reception / Critical response
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Ferretti nel suo workshop
context_page_description: Silence is a 2016 internationally co-produced epic historical drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and with a screenplay by Jay Cocks and Scorsese, based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Shūsaku Endō. Set in Nagasaki, Japan, the film was shot in Taiwan, using studios in Taipei and Taichung and locations in Hualien County. The film stars Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Liam Neeson, Tadanobu Asano, and Ciarán Hinds. The plot follows two 17th-century Jesuit priests who travel from Portugal to Edo-era Japan via Macau to locate their missing mentor and spread Catholic Christianity. The story is set in a time when it was common for the faith's Japanese adherents to hide from the persecution that resulted from the suppression of Christianity in Japan during the Shimabara Rebellion against the Tokugawa shogunate. These are now called the kakure kirishitan, or "hidden Christians". It is the second filmed adaptation of Endō's novel, following a 1971 film of the same name.
  The pre-production phase of the filmmaking for Silence went through a cycle of over two decades of setbacks and reassessments.
context_section_description: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 83% based on 276 reviews, and an average rating of 7.48/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Silence ends Martin Scorsese's decades-long creative quest with a thoughtful, emotionally resonant look at spirituality and human nature that stands among the director's finest works." On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating, the film has a score of 79 out of 100, based on 48 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale. Several critics have referred to the film as being among the finest films of Scorsese's career.
  Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film four out of four stars, stating that, "Silence is a monumental work, and a punishing one. It puts you through hell with no promise of enlightenment, only a set of questions and propositions, sensations and experiences ... This is not the sort of film you 'like' or 'don't like.' It's a film that you experience and then live with." Richard Roeper awarded the film four out of four stars, saying, "When Ferreira finally appears and we learn the truth about where he's been all this time, it further serves Scorsese's central theme about the conflict between adhering to one's sacred vows and traditional beliefs and doing the right thing, the prudent thing, the moral thing, on a very pragmatic level."
  Several reviewers such as Justin Chang and Mark Kermode emphasized Scorsese's collaboration with his production crew and with his actors as contributing to the film's quality. Writing for the Los Angeles Times, Justin Chang called the film an "anguished masterwork" for Scorsese stating: "Working with such sterling past collaborators as editor Thelma Schoonmaker, production designer Dante Ferretti and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, Scorsese has done more than resurrect a vision of feudal Japan... Silence feels less like a feat of adaptation than an act of artistic submission". Mark Kermode writing for The Guardian indicated exemplary performances by the range of Japanese supporting actors in the cast stating: "The real stars however, are the Japanese cast, from Yōsuke Kubozuka's enigmatic wretch, Kichijirō ... to Yoshi Oida's devout elder Ichizo, to whose village these priests bring both salvation and suffering. As a smiling, silver-tongued interpreter, Tadanobu Asano is a superb foil to the inquisitor, Inoue, played with fly-swatting menace by a wheedling Issey Ogata".
  Apart from the narrative qualities of the film, the filmmaking was also praised for the depth and thoroughness of its thematic content. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, who assigned it 3½ stars out of four, wrote that Silence "offers frustratingly few answers but all the right questions" and argued that it is among the director's "most spiritually moving films to date". In Slant, Jesse Cataldo argued, "Tapping into the vast pool of vagueness and uncertainty that exists beneath the veneer of a rigid, righteous belief, Scorsese crafts a versatile, multifaceted work that encourages serious reflection and contemplation." Alissa Wilkinson of Vox wrote that Silence "is beautiful, unsettling and one of the finest religious movies ever made". John Ehrett of The Federalist praised the film highly, saying, "Silence is a must-see masterpiece about the paradoxes of faith." Ehrett further added, "Complex yet reverent, Silence explores the meanings and dilemmas of Christian faith, and decisively sets a new benchmark for religious films."
  Some reviewers cited the legacy aspects of the film for Scorsese and compared Scorsese to iconic director Ingmar Bergman. Ty Burr of The Boston Globe said, "The movie's being promoted as the third in the director's unofficial trilogy of faith, after The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Kundun (1997), and it feels like a self-conscious masterpiece, a summing-up from a filmmaker who, at 74, may be thinking of his legacy." Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out London gave the film five stars out of five, saying, 
caption: Dante Ferretti received praise from reviewer Justin Chang for his set designs used in the film.
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