I’m even teasing myself with that title; how amazing would it be to see latter-day Scorsese tackle a silent movie? (I’ll have to make do with A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies instead, and be satisfied with him enthusing on silent classics.)
Instead, Variety reports that Scorsese is ‘determined’ to make an adaptation of Shusako Endo’s novel Silence his next film.* Daniel Day-Lewis and Benicio Del Toro are negotiating to join, with Gael Garcia Bernal also a possible addition. That’s a beautiful cast for what could be a magnificent late-model Scorsese vision of a crisis of faith. Is there any subject more in line with the director’s long-term concerns and interest?
Silence was published in 1966 and tells of a 17th century Portuguese Jesuit sent to Japan to bolster the Church’s presence and investigate the possible abandonment of faith of his mentor. I haven’t read the novel, but it sounds like a very internal story — jump to comparisons to Kundun, which is just fine by me. I love the cast and the idea of Scorsese going back to an overt contemplation of faith. Let’s get this one going, now!
*’Determined’ seems to be playing it safe, as Graham King is set up to finance; I’m quoting it as a way to point to Jeff Wells’s amazingly small-minded post on the film, where ‘determined’ for him translates as ‘hopefully this shit won’t happen’.