Mar­tin Scorsese’s Silence gets an amaz­ing first trailer

Let’s just pause for a moment to con­vey the sense of antic­i­pa­tion and excite­ment sur­round­ing Mar­tin Scorsese’s lat­est film. It’s… big. Even before this first lit­tle peek, the Oscar buz­zards were cir­cling over the icon­ic director’s long-time pas­sion project, pre-primed to show­er their love.

Silence only cement­ed its Christ­mas release date in Octo­ber and its pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign has just kicked off lit­tle over a month before the film hits cin­e­mas. It would be an under­state­ment to say that we’ve been wait­ing on ten­ter­hooks for this film, which has remained one of the most high­ly antic­i­pat­ed in recent years, not least because its direc­tor seems to have chan­neled his heart and soul into it.

In an inter­view with Dead­line, the film’s star, Adam Dri­ver described Silence as, ​“sim­i­lar to [Roland Joffe’s] The Mis­sion… There’s a bit of Homer’s Odyssey in that these two young priests are trav­el­ling the world on a mas­sive quest.” Silence may be a Homer-esque epic that explores the nature of Chris­tian­i­ty, but that could also refer to the film’s Odyssey-like ges­ta­tion peri­od since Scors­ese wrote his first draft back in the ear­ly ​’90s.

The plan was to begin shoot­ing it direct­ly after Gangs of New York (2002) with Daniel Day-Lewis, Gael Gar­cia Bernel and Beni­cio Del Toro as the orig­i­nal stars. All three dropped out due to the many delays and finan­cial hiccups.

Now it’s here with Liam Nee­son, Andrew Garfield and Dri­ver who take the lead as the three 17^th cen­tu­ry Por­tuguese Jesuit priests. Based on Shusa­ki Endo’s 1966 nov­el, Garfield and Driver’s char­ac­ters ven­ture into the Japan­ese jun­gle to find their men­tor and spread the gospel of Chris­tian­i­ty, only to be met with hos­til­i­ty and violence.

The trailer’s strik­ing snap­shots of bru­tal­i­ty and cru­ci­fix­ions are over­laid with screech­ing vio­lins. It all con­cludes with the punchy clos­er, which pin­points the film’s title, as Garfield’s char­ac­ter whis­pers, ​‘I pray, but I am lost. Am I pray­ing to silence?’.

After watch­ing the grip­ping trail­er for a movie that Scors­ese has been work­ing for the major­i­ty of his career, we couldn’t be more stoked for the 23^rd Decem­ber (or 1 Jan­u­ary in the UK).

LWLies 107: The Sin­ners issue – Out now!