Silence, the long-gestating period piece hailing from Martin Scorsese, reportedly clocks in at 195 minutes in length, making it the director’s longest film by quite a stretch.
Word comes by way of Variety reporter Kris Tapley (via The Playlist), who revealed that the Oscar hopeful – which stars Liam Neeson and Andrew Garfield as two Jesuit Catholic priests on a pilgrimage to Japan – is shaping up to be a bum-numbing three hours and 15 minutes.
For the sake of perspective, that’s a fair bit longer than both The Wolf of Wall Street (three hours) and beloved mob pic Casino (two hours 58 minutes), though it’s worth keeping in mind that Paramount Pictures will likely nip and tuck Silence in time for theatrical release. Also of note is that Gangs of New York initially clocked in at an eye-watering three hours and 35 minutes before The Weinstein Company wrangled the American epic down to a more feasible two hours and 47 minutes.
Based on the novel by Shūsaku Endō, Silence – billed as Scorsese’s long-awaited passion project – tells the story of Young Portuguese Jesuit Sebastião Rodrigues, who is “sent to Japan to succor the local Church and investigate reports that his mentor, Fr. Cristóvão Ferreira, has committed apostasy. (Ferreira is a historical figure, who apostatized after torture and later married a Japanese woman and wrote a treatise against Christianity.)”
“Fr. Rodrigues and his companion Fr. Francisco Garrpe arrive in Japan in 1638. There they find the local Christian population driven underground. Security officials force suspected Christians to trample on fumie, which are crudely carved images of Christ. Those who refuse are imprisoned and killed. The novel relates the trials of the Christians and increasing hardship suffered by Rodrigues, as more is learnt about the circumstances of Ferreira’s apostasy.”
Silence is booked in for theatrical release in November, and we’ll be keeping track of the long-awaited picture as it zeroes in on a specific date – not to mention an official running time.