Silence
Paramount Pictures | Release Date: December 23, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
79
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 48 Critic Reviews
Positive:
39
Mixed:
8
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJan 12, 2017
Only Scorsese could craft a film of such moral gravity for multiplexes and fascinate for nearly three hours. Read full review
100
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezJan 6, 2017
Silence feels like a career summation for a filmmaker who has spent his life exploring his faith through his work. Here is a movie about the importance of religion that will move you, regardless of whichever God you worship — or don’t. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperJan 5, 2017
What beauty. What brutality. What madness. Read full review
100
SlateDana StevensDec 27, 2016
Despite its technical and visual grandeur, there’s a moral simplicity to Silence that can sometimes recall the work of perhaps the other greatest deeply Catholic filmmaker, the French master Robert Bresson. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzDec 27, 2016
Silence is a monumental work, and a punishing one. Read full review
100
ConsequenceBlake GobleDec 23, 2016
Profound and illusory, Silence shows Martin Scorsese at the confessional, in sensationally cinematic style, delivering perhaps his most intimate work to date. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangDec 22, 2016
Building implacable dread and tension from scene to scene, the story is as simple as its underlying ideas are endlessly complex. Read full review
100
TimeStephanie ZacharekDec 22, 2016
Silence is something to see whether you’re certain there’s a God or whether you just believe in sunlight, which covers just about everybody. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsStephen Whitty Dec 10, 2016
Silence is a slowly unfolding, deeply thoughtful film about questioning yourself. About questioning authority. About taking stock of where you've failed as a human being, and wondering how you can make amends — to yourself, to others, and to God. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinDec 10, 2016
It’s a film full of tight close-ups of hands accepting gifts that comfort, inspire and bring succour to their recipients’ souls. That’s how we should receive it. Read full review
100
Time OutJoshua RothkopfDec 10, 2016
Scorsese has hit the rare heights of Ingmar Bergman and Carl Theodor Dreyer, artists who found in religion a battleground that often left the strongest in tatters, compromised and ruined. It’s a movie desperately needed at a moment when bluster must yield to self-reflection. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 20, 2016
The movie is impressive. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyDec 10, 2016
Silence, more successfully than not, artfully addresses the core issue of its maker's lifelong religious struggle. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrJan 5, 2017
The movie’s being promoted as the third in the director’s unofficial trilogy of faith, after “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988) and “Kundun” (1997), and it feels like a self-conscious masterpiece, a summing-up from a filmmaker who, at 74, may be thinking of his legacy. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenJan 4, 2017
The silence in Silence is deep and profound. Read full review
88
USA TodayBrian TruittDec 20, 2016
One of the deeper and most thoughtful projects in Scorsese’s career. It feels as though his entire Hollywood career has culminated in this grand quest, which while excessively long, effectively explores the brutal costs of unbending faith. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 20, 2016
No one with a genuine belief in the possibilities and mysteries of cinema would think of missing Silence. It's essential filmmaking from the church of Scorsese, a modern master who lives and breathes in the images he puts on screen. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineJesse CataldoDec 15, 2016
Martin Scorsese crafts a versatile, multifaceted work that encourages serious reflection and contemplation. Read full review
83
MTV NewsAmy NicholsonJan 21, 2017
It's possible to watch Silence and see a story about saints martyred by an oppressive government. It's also possible to see a told-you-so parable about imperialists who should have stayed home. I suspect Scorsese would be a little disappointed by either conclusion. But he stays quiet because he wants to challenge the audience to go deeper inside themselves, to separate our own religion (or lack of one) from the faith that guided us to it. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyDec 20, 2016
It is slow and solemn in stretches and often remote, but it rewards patience with a transcendent epilogue that departs from the main character’s point-of-view to find a glimmer of meaning. Read full review
83
The Film StageNick NewmanDec 10, 2016
I don’t entirely know what to do with this work which has the capacity to play as both a definitive film about spiritual vocation and a sometimes torpid melange of concept and execution — all, mind, said after one viewing as often confounded by expectation as it was made joyous by the discovery of what had Scorsese so bothered for decades. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzJan 6, 2017
An epic-length, fascinating film about faith and its opposite number, doubt. Read full review
80
CineVueJoe WalshDec 13, 2016
If we allow ourselves - as Scorsese asks us - to place ourselves in the shoes of these priests, then we have a graceful film of stoic power, which wrestles with the very nature of faith. Read full review
80
Village VoiceMichael NordineDec 13, 2016
Not since The Tree of Life has Christianity been explored onscreen in such serious, conflicted terms, but Scorsese has crafted a far less grandiose experience than Terrence Malick did five years ago. Silence is restrained, austere, even ascetic. Read full review
80
Total FilmJamie GrahamDec 10, 2016
Scorsese blends his twin religions of Catholicism and cinema to considerable effect. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerDec 10, 2016
Less showy than The Last Temptation Of Christ, more gripping than Kundun, the third part of Scorsese’s unofficial ‘religious’ trilogy is beautifully made, staggeringly ambitious and utterly compelling. Read full review
80
Screen DailyTim GriersonDec 10, 2016
Uneven, sometimes repetitive but also powerfully moving and thought-provoking, Silence is an imperfect movie that’s very hard to shake. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawDec 10, 2016
With ambition and reach, and often a real dramatic grandeur, Scorsese’s film has addressed the imperial crisis of Christian evangelists with stamina, seriousness and a gusto comparable to David Lean’s. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie BaumgartenJan 4, 2017
Silence is Scorsese’s mode of sharing the Holy Communion. To that, every cinephile will say, “Amen.” Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerJan 13, 2017
Silence, though conceived on a grand scale, is an almost obsessively personal, at times even private, film. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonJan 12, 2017
This may not be Scorsese’s best film, but it’s unquestionably his most impassioned. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliJan 5, 2017
The movie eventually achieves a level of powerful drama…but only after dithering for more than an hour. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerTirdad DerakhshaniJan 5, 2017
Scorsese’s adaptation is overlong and at times insufferably self-indulgent, but contains sublime moments of transcendent beauty and a wealth of beautiful performances. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattDec 20, 2016
At 160 stately, glacial minutes, it’s also an endurance test — one that can feel like its own act of faith to pass. Read full review
75
The PlaylistNick SchagerDec 16, 2016
If immaculately realized, Silence is also an increasingly monotonous, patience-testing slow-burner, with characters repeatedly voicing their fears about God’s silence (often in voiceover), debating the merits of apostatizing in service of a compassionate cause, and suffering in quiet. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnDec 10, 2016
A slow-burn tale filled with beautiful imagery and understated performances, its elegance yields one of Scorsese’s most subtle efforts. Read full review
70
TheWrapRobert AbeleDec 10, 2016
It’s an invitingly austere movie, designed for both searching believers and curious others. The film can be cinematically rigorous, but it’s never ritualistically flashy. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsJan 5, 2017
The easiest thing you can say about Silence is that it's a labor of love, made by a valiant soldier for his chosen storytelling medium. Read full review
63
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanJan 5, 2017
The morale of [Scorsese's] story is ultimately both tough and nuanced. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 22, 2016
The film’s solemnity is seductive — as is Mr. Scorsese’s art — especially in light of the triviality and primitiveness of many movies, even if its moments of greatness also make its failures seem more pronounced. Read full review
60
ScreenCrushMatt SingerDec 22, 2016
With his mastery of composition, editing, and music, Scorsese has made some of the most engaging movies in history, experiences that express fascinating ideas through gripping stories, compelling characters, and unparalleled craft. Here, all of those elements seem sublimated to the larger points Scorsese wants to make. Read full review
60
We Got This CoveredMatt DonatoDec 21, 2016
It’s broody and disciplined, soaked in the pungent style of foreign auteurs who molded Scorsese’s own love of film – yet overburdened by a downward spiral lacking fire and unforgiving features. Read full review
60
VarietyPeter DebrugeDec 10, 2016
Though undeniably gorgeous, it is punishingly long, frequently boring, and woefully unengaging at some of its most critical moments.... Still, viewed through the narrow prism of films about faith, Silence is a remarkable achievement. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreJan 11, 2017
It has maddeningly unsatisfying theological debates, scrupulous though myopic period detail and an utter lack of narrative drive. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Kate TaylorJan 5, 2017
For all that Silence is a gorgeous film filled with imagery that is sometimes startling and often compelling, the director sadly fails in a passion project decades in the making: This is a long and dull costume drama that seems to think a contemporary audience can picture faith as easily as it does a cassock, cross or kimono. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 22, 2016
This is filmmaking as an act of devotion, and exploration — not just of the nature of faith but of faith’s obverse, abject doubt. The production is physically beautiful, and evokes the beauties of classic Japanese films, but the substance makes few concessions to conventional notions of entertainment. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle SmithDec 21, 2016
Silence comes to us billed as 30 years in the making. Unfortunately, it plays like 30 years in the watching. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleJan 5, 2017
Still, when you’re making a Christian epic and the best thing about it is the guy playing the inquisitor, you have a serious problem. Read full review
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