Film: Silence (2016)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Starring: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Liam Neeson, Ciarán Hinds

Release: December 22, 2016 (United States), February 16, 2017 (Australia)

There’s been a lot of, well, silence surrounding Martin Scorsese’s brand new film, Silence. It was first announced what seems like twenty years ago and then the film went into hiding while Ol’ Eyebrows plowed through pre-production, production and post-production. Then, all of a sudden, after years of nothing, whispers began to emerge regarding how good the dang thing was shaping up to be. Then, all of us sudden, a few days ago, the internet triumphantly declared that we’d be getting a trailer before we knew it. This, ladies and gentlemen, is that very trailer.

Let’s address the one really bad thing about the trailer, because there’s only one bad thing that we’ve managed to pick up on. That’s the accents. Scorsese should have learnt from Gangs of New York that he shouldn’t mess around with Irish accents. Pretty much whenever anyone opens their mouth in this trailer, except Ciarán Hinds (who actually is Irish), they sound ridiculous. That might be a tough thing to get past come February (or December if you’re lucky enough to be hovering around America on the 22nd) when this little sucker hits our screens.

The rest of this trailer looks pretty outstanding, and certainly nothing too similar to what we’ve ever seen from Martin Scorsese in the past, despite it bearing a few similarities to Kundun, The Last Temptation of Christ and (regrettably) Gangs of New York. We’re obviously reserving judgement until we end up seeing the damn thing but it’s impossible to get our hopes up because it’s Martin Scorsese. Scorsese films and Star Wars films are the two forms of cinema that it’s impossible not to be excited for, regardless of reservations. Star Wars films have proven to disappoint without fail for almost twenty years now. Scorsese has a better strike rate. Bring it home, Marty!