You’d have to cast your mind back to the year 1990 to locate the moment when Martin Scorsese first came attached to Silence, a new interpretation of Shūsaku Endō’s novel that has since developed into a full-blown passion project for the veteran director.
In those intervening years, the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis, Benicio del Toro and Gael García Bernal all flirted with the religious opus, before Silence was effectively placed on ice as Scorsese’s attention was drawn to a handful of other projects – think Shutter Island, Hugo and The Wolf of Wall Street. But time wore on, and eventually the pieces began to fall into place, starting with the casting of Andrew Garfield and Liam Neeson as two Jesuit priests bound on a pilgrimage to feudal Japan.
It didn’t take long for Adam Driver, Ciaran Hinds, Tadanobu Asano (Thor) and Yosuke Kubozuka to climb aboard for the “meditative and brutal” trip, and though it’s a slightly worrisome that Paramount Pictures is yet to roll out any footage whatsoever, the calibre of talent on both sides of the camera ensures that Silence will be jostling for a place in this year’s awards season.
Adapted by Martin Scorsese and co-writer Jay Cocks (Gangs of New York), you can catch a new glimpse of Garfield and Neeson in action via the gallery of images above. We’ll be keeping tabs on Silence as it inches closer to its theatrical release in January, at which point we’ll surely have laid eyes on that elusive first trailer.
Before that, though, Silence will make its debut via limited release on December 23, opening up the field for the religious opus to enter an awards race that’s already hosting the likes of Manchester By the Sea, Gold, La La Land and Hacksaw Ridge, the latter of which also features Andrew Garfield in a prominent role.
