'Silence' Early Buzz: Critics Weigh In On Martin Scorsese's Passion Project

Martin Scorsese has been working on Silence for literally decades now, and in just a few weeks we'll finally get to see the fruits of his labor. Unless, that is, you're one of the few lucky critics who've already had the chance to watch it. Yup, Silence has begun screening, and the first reactions are now rolling in. Get the Silence early buzz below.

Based on the novel by Shusaku EndoSilence stars Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver as a pair of 17th century Portuguese Jesuit monks who travel to Japan in search of their mentor (played by Liam Neeson), who is reported to have committed apostasy. Also starring are Ciarán HindsTadanobu AsanoYosuke Kubozuka, and Issey Ogata.

Full-length reviews of Silence are still under embargo, so reactions so far have been limited to social media. These 140-character comments are necessarily less nuanced than an 800-word review would be. All that said, we can still get a general sense of the critical consensus building around this movie, and so far things are looking good. Really good. Like, "one of Scorsese's best" good.

Not everyone was quite as enamored, though.

No movie gets total universal praise, so it seems a good sign that even the less positive responses to Silence are more lukewarm than outright cold. It's also promising that no one is mentioning an epidemic of terrible accents — that Silence trailer had me kind of worried, but maybe this means they work better in context or that they're just not bad enough to detract from otherwise strong performances. Or, you know, maybe the people who straight-up hated Silence are just keeping their opinions to themselves for now. We'll find out as more reactions and then full-on reviews start to surface.

In any case, expect this conversation to keep getting more complex and more interesting as more people join in. And definitely expect to keep an eye on this one during the awards race, if that's your kind of thing.

Silence is in theaters December 23.