Our first official look at Martin Scorsese’s passion project, Silence

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

UPDATE: Unofficial images have been removed upon studio's request.

It's taken many many years of development but at long last the moment is here; Martin Scorsese's long gestating passion project SILENCE has completed production in Taiwan. Scorsese first received the Shûsaku Endô novel on which the film is based in 1988 and put together his first pass of the script in 1991. That first attempt wasn't successful and Scorsese realized that the film was going to have to "develop or evolve" within himself before he would truly be ready to take on this dramatic spiritual journey.

The subject matter presented by Shusaku Endo was in my life since I was very, very young, I was very much involved in religion, I was raised in a strong Catholic family. … Further reflection is how [we] want to lead our life in the Christian faith … so ultimately this book drew my attention when it was given to me in 1988.

Let's take a look at our first official image from SILENCE, courtesy of Entertainment Weekly, which features Andrew Garfield and Shinya Tsukamoto.

SILENCE revolves around two 17th-century Jesuit priests who travel to Japan to investigate claims of religious persecution and whether or not their mentor has broken from the church. The film stars Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver as the young priests and the Liam Neeson as their mentor. Andrew Garfield plays the lead role of Father Rodrigues and commented on the character during an end-of-production press conference in Taiwan:

It’s a lifetime that the character of father Rodrigues goes through that we witness. It’s such an agonizing lifetime that he has to live through and yet he wrestles with the greatest and most important and difficult questions that we all wrestle with, which is how to live and how does one live a life of meaning, a life of faith, and does that require you to live in doubt as well? That’s just scratching the surface of why I felt drawn to this story and this character.

With the amount of talent involved in this film on both sides of the camera, in addition to the decades of pure love it took to get this thing made, I've no doubt that SILENCE will be an incredible event and hopefully count among Martin Scorsese's greatest works. SILENCE doesn't have an official release date at the moment but it should hit theaters in 2016.

You're trapped on a desert island with five Martin Scorsese films, which ones would you choose?