Silence · reception & legacy
2016 · Martin Scorsese
How Silence has been received, argued over, and remembered.
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.
Named by the director
Influences Martin Scorsese has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.
- 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.