It’s lining up to be a quite busy last few weeks as far as 2016’s year in movies, and no other movie matters more (to me) thanMartin Scorsese’sSilence. Sure, sure,Rogue One: A Star Wars Storyis on the way, andPablo Larrain’sJackiealready looks like another masterwork from one of the best filmmakers currently on the scene. Still, the new Martin Scorsese movie always takes precedence. Even ifP.T. Anderson,Wes Anderson,Terrence Malick, and a resurrectedHoward Hawksall were putting out new movies in December, the new Martin Scorsese always takes precedence.
So, when it was whispered about earlier this year that Scorsese’s first cut was north of three hours, I didn’t blink. If anything, my heart swelled with joy. The idea of a 10-hour Scorsese movie makes me cackle with sublime delight, so a movie that’s a little south ofSteven Soderbergh’sChedoesn’t bother me, but it’s going to annoy a lot of other people. So, whenDeadlinebroke the news today that the film had been sliced down to 159 minutes flat, that sounded like a decent compromise for both sides.
Keep in mind, an Oscar nominee is almost always 110 minutes or more, andSilence, a long-gestating passion project of Scorsese’s, is beings set up as an Oscar heavyweight alongsideMoonlight,Nocturnal Animals,Manchester by the Sea, andJackie. AndSilence’s producerIrwin Winklertold Deadline that, amongst other things, he thinksSilenceis Scorsese’s best work to date. It’s hard for me to concisely explain to you exactly how large a statement that is. This is the guy who madeGoodFellas,The Departed,Taxi Driver,Bringing Out the Dead, andThe Wolf of Wall Street, amongst a handful of other masterworks. My instinct is to see this as a producer advocating for his movie but it’s not like this doesn’t affect my anticipation ofSilenceand my impatience to see the movie. The film’s limited release date, December 23rd, cannot get here fast enough.
