Sightlines · reception
How Silence was received
2016 · Martin Scorsese · Silence on Sightlines
The arc
In 2016 it landed as a respected but under-seen passion project — a box-office flop that got just one Oscar nod (cinematography) after 25+ years of Scorsese trying to make it. Less than a decade on, it's routinely called his late-career masterpiece and the 2010s Scorsese film the culture underrated most.
What’s debated
The perennial fight: is this Scorsese's true masterpiece or a punishing slog — and every rewatch thread relitigates what the film actually thinks about faith, doubt, and apostasy.
Its footprint
The image of a foot hovering over the fumi-e has become shorthand for impossible moral tests, and the film's Oscar snub is a stock entry in 'the Academy got it wrong' discourse. It also lives on through Andrew Garfield's much-discussed year of real Jesuit spiritual exercises, which became its own press-tour legend.
Where it stands
A textbook canon climber: the 'actually his best film' pick that Letterboxd's Scorsese faithful deploy to separate themselves from the Goodfellas crowd.
Did you know? Scorsese spent nearly three decades trying to make it after being given Shūsaku Endō's novel in 1989, and before release he screened the film at the Vatican for hundreds of Jesuit priests and met Pope Francis.
Named by the director
- The Flowers of St. Francis (1950) — Scorsese repeatedly cited Rossellini's film as a touchstone for depicting faith on screen while discussing Silence.
- Kenji Mizoguchi — Scorsese named Mizoguchi's films, especially Ugetsu, among the Japanese cinema that shaped his approach to the film's world.