The plot follows two 17th-century Jesuit priests who travel from Portugal to Edo period Japan via Macau to locate their missing mentor and spread Catholic Christianity.

The story is set in a time when it was common for the faith's Japanese adherents to hide from the persecution that resulted from the suppression of Christianity in Japan after the Shimabara Rebellion (1637–1638) against the Tokugawa shogunate.

A long-time passion project for Scorsese, which he had developed for over 25 years, the film premiered in Rome on November 29, 2016, and was released in the United States on December 23, 2016.

Veteran Portuguese Jesuit priest Cristóvão Ferreira is forced to watch as Japanese converts to Christianity are tortured to death for refusing to renounce their faith.

A few years later, at St. Paul's College in Macau, an Italian Jesuit priest, Alessandro Valignano, receives news that Ferreira renounced his faith in Japan.

In disbelief, Ferreira's Portuguese pupils, the young Jesuit priests Sebastião Rodrigues and Francisco Garupe, set off to find him, guided by Kichijirō, a fisherman stranded in Macau.

The villagers hide the two priests, but they are horrified when officials of the shogunate arrive to ferret out hidden Christians and force them to step on a fumi-e, a carved image of Christ.

Rodrigues takes a Japanese name and wife and is tasked by the Inquisitor to assist Ferreira in his efforts to prevent Dutch traders from smuggling Christian paraphernalia into Dejima.

Scorsese considered Silence a "passion project": it had been in development since 1990, two years after the release of his film The Last Temptation of Christ, which also carried strongly religious themes.

In August 2012, Cecchi Gori Pictures sued Scorsese over an alleged breach of contract agreements related to Silence.

Cecchi Gori Pictures asserted that Scorsese agreed to pay "substantial compensation and other valuable benefits" in order to first direct The Departed, Shutter Island and Hugo.

The complaint was founded on the company's allegation that Scorsese failed to pay the fees agreed upon for Hugo, and that he breached the contract's terms by filming The Wolf of Wall Street ahead of Silence.

Scorsese, via his representatives, responded: "The claims asserted are completely contradicted by, inconsistent with, and contrary to the express terms of an agreement entered into by the parties last year."

[42] Religious historian Haruko Nawata Ward has indicated that the inclusion of the small crucifix in the deceased priest's hand at the end of the film was an auteur decision made by Scorsese not included in Endō's original book.

[51] By February 2014, Scorsese had begun scouting locations in Taiwan,[52] with filming set for the summer, and eventually pushed back to early 2015.

According to a spokesperson for the film, a tragic incident occurred in one of the backlots of the production when a ceiling collapsed, which resulted in the death of one contracted employee and the injury of two others.

With the weather constantly changing, he would have inconsistencies in terms of lighting that he solved by filming some sequences at night time that would be lit for either dusk or sunset.

[63] The world premiere of the film was held at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome on November 29, followed by a special screening the next day in Vatican City.

The site's critical consensus reads: "Silence ends Martin Scorsese's decades-long creative quest with a thoughtful, emotionally resonant look at spirituality and human nature that stands among the director's finest works.

"[78] Several reviewers such as Justin Chang and Mark Kermode emphasized Scorsese's collaboration with his production crew and with his actors as contributing to the film's quality.

As a smiling, silver-tongued interpreter, Tadanobu Asano is a superb foil to the inquisitor, Inoue, played with fly-swatting menace by a wheedling Issey Ogata".

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, who assigned it 3+1⁄2 stars out of four, wrote that Silence "offers frustratingly few answers but all the right questions" and argued that it is among the director's "most spiritually moving films to date".

[81] In Slant, Jesse Cataldo argued: "Tapping into the vast pool of vagueness and uncertainty that exists beneath the veneer of a rigid, righteous belief, Scorsese crafts a versatile, multifaceted work that encourages serious reflection and contemplation".

Ehrett further added: "Complex yet reverent, Silence explores the meanings and dilemmas of Christian faith, and decisively sets a new benchmark for religious films.

"[84] Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out London gave the film five stars out of five, saying: "Scorsese has hit the rare heights of filmmakers like Ingmar Bergman and Carl Theodor Dreyer, artists who find in religion a battleground that leaves even the strongest in tatters, compromised and broken.

"[86] Robbie Collin of The Telegraph gave the film five stars out of five, stating: "Scorsese's brutal spiritual epic will scald, and succor, your soul."

[87] Brian Truitt of USA Today gave the film three-and-a-half stars, stating: "With the religious historical drama Silence, Martin Scorsese proves he's as masterful a filmmaker with men of God as he is with gangsters."

It is beautiful to look at, but feels inert, humourless and overly devout (to say nothing of over-long; Masahiro Shinoda's 1971 adaptation got Shūsako Endō's 1966 novel on to film using 30 fewer minutes than Scorsese).

The first version of the script he attempted to write with his co-writer Jay Cocks managed to get only midway through the material before being set aside as insufficiently sensitive to the spiritual aspects of the book.

Uncertainty about the fate of the soul (or the self, for secularists) lies at the heart of human experience, injecting many a mind with the existential fear, trembling, and sickness unto death of which Søren Kierkegaard vividly wrote.