Given the extent to which this website pays Martin Scorsese attention, it will not surprise readers to learn we (i.e. the few of us who’ve seen it) think Silence is one of the year’s major films. The good news is that a title many crave is getting some major promotional blitz, as evidenced by what’s collected here — among them an intimate 23-minute conversation with Jesuit James Martin (one of the film’s consultants), as well as new previews.
Before we get to that, some dispatches from the press conference held in New York City last week. Hey U Guys covered the event and shared some interesting tidbits, the best of which — Scorsese’s lack of interest in contemporary cinema — I’ve included below:
“There’s over saturation, particularly in our world as it is now and nothing really does have a meaning. Images for example are everywhere. Cinema used to be in a building and even on television, you’d see a film or whatever. I must say a lot of the films that I’m aware of… and I don’t see that many new ones over the past two or three years, I stopped because the images don’t mean anything.
We’re just completely saturated with images that don’t mean anything. Words certainly don’t mean anything anymore, they’re twisted and turned. So where’s the meaning? Where’s the truth? So we have to strip away everything. It goes back to that question I had in Means Streets, how do you live a good life? A life which is good, meaning compassion, and respect for others, in a world like today or in a world where I grew up, quite honestly.”
See the videos below:
Silence opens on December 23 and expands in early January.