YMMV / Silence

• Adaptation Displacement: For many, this film serves an an introduction to the novel, even though the novel and a previous film adaptation have been around since the 1960's. The novel by Japanese author Shusaku Endo is more popular in Japan than in the West (despite famous fans like Graham Greene) and the film, despite being directed by a famous film-maker like Masahiro Shinoda, is generally seen as a minor work.^note Not helping is the fact that Shinoda's film takes massive liberties with the novel in the final section, and Scorsese's film is very much Truer to the Text. The reason is that Shinoda did not share the author's religious beliefs and focus, while Martin Scorsese was also Catholic just like Endo was.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: The 2016 Film makes Fr. Rodrigues' wife into a mysterious character since it's implied that she put Fr. Rodrigues' crucifix in his robes in a moment that she did not have to. The scene after that where she smashes a pot and hesitates and waits back reluctantly hints at her struggle observing Buddhist rites, and suggests that she too was a Hidden Christian, unbeknownst to Rodrigues and the world.
• Americans Hate Tingle: Perhaps unsurprisingly, orthodox and conservative Catholics have a bone to pick with the film—especially as most of them take the film's position (of apostates being worthy of sympathy and forgiveness, or at the least tolerance) as an insult and unfair to those who did choose martyrdom bravely (mainly since the film also portrays them pretty straightforward), if not flat out mocking missionary work (something that has become more normalized in secularized/multireligious societies). Of course, their position/criticism can be read as the very problem being criticized by Endo's original work.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: An almost three hour adaptation of a book about martyrdom, torture and religious debates set entirely in feudal Japan with a very critical (albeit even handed) view of European intervention, is not exactly a good sell for a wide audience, despite the involvement of Scorsese. The film's uncommercial nature was one of the key reasons why it took years and many Money, Dear Boy projects for Scorsese to finally get it made.
• Award Snub: Because of its late arrival in awards season, the film was unable to gain nominations at the Golden Globes or the Screen Actors Guild awards. The musical score was likewise snubbed because it failed to qualify for the specific categories that determine film music, namely the fact that it was specifically composed of carefully recorded natural sounds by minimalist composers by Kim Allen Kluge and Kathryn Kluge. Further exemplified at the Academy Awards, as it only secured one nomination for Cinematography (Rodrigo Prieto). Issey Ogata (unanimously praised for his work as Inquisitor Inoue) was most prominently snubbed as was Adam Driver (likewise neglected for his turn in Paterson). Garfield was also snubbed, but he did get a Best Actor nomination for Hacksaw Ridge.
• Awesome Music: A surprising lack of it, especially for a Martin Scorsese picture. However, the film's trailer did use an incredible piece conceived by trailer music company Confidential Music called "Supply Chain".
• Cult Classic: An odd example considering how well-known Scorsese and his films are, but despite the movie becoming a huge Box Office Bomb, it has also earned plenty of love from critics and the viewers who managed to check it out, and it is often considered one of (if not the) most underrated movie by Martin Scorsese. Some even consider it one of his best.
• Evil Is Cool: The Affably Evil Inquisitor Inoue as played by Issey Ogata got a lot of love from critics and viewers, who found him charismatic, unexpectedly charming and complexly motivated rather than a simple Pontius Pilate-type.
• Fridge Brilliance: Considering Jesus forgave one man for denying him three times to save his own skin, Fr. Rodrigues will receive that same grace for his sacrifice.
• Memetic Mutation: It's become a common joke for commenters to play the Role Association game and note how the film will be about Mance Rayder sending Spider-Man and Kylo Ren to rescue Qui-Gon Jinn/Bryan Mills. Fans of arthouse films will also recognize the interpreter played by Tadanobu Asano as Genghis Khan and Inquisitor Inoue as Emperor Hirohito (from Aleksandr Sokurov's Biopic The Sun), and likewise avant-garde director Shinya Tsukamoto as Mokichi, the Jiisama of Tomogi's Hidden Christians.
• Misaimed Fandom: Some fans of the movie sympathize with the Japanese Inquisition, particularly those with anti-Christian or anti-religious sentiments. This is in part to Scorsese's somewhat even handed portrayal of them as surprisingly principled and reasonable at times and their visible reluctance and distaste for torturing innocent villagers for nothing more than belief. An audience is supposed to relate to the fears of the Inquisition in protecting their nation from foreign influence and regard the (admittedly well-intentioned) mission of Fr. Rodrigues with criticism, but the audience isn't supposed to condone or justify religious persecution, especially since the point of the film is that the real victims were poor Japanese peasants who truly do believe in and find meaning in Christ's teachings, and that a religious mission for all its colonialist overtones is not always so simplistically one-sided.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The brutal tortures the Japanese Christians go through in the film is absolutely fear-inducing. This includes being burned alive, being crucified on a sea shore to be drowned via high tides, pouring boiling water on them, and decapitation.
  • By far the worst is the Pit. It involves suspending a man upside down in a hole, with a vein in his temple cut so that blood can vent rather than rush to the head and kill the man. This keeps a man alive while suspended in endless agony. This got Fr. Ferreira to finally renounce his faith. Rodrigues expects this torture to be visited on him, but instead it happens to five fellow Christians instead, and Rodrigues abjures his faith to prevent them from suffering more on his account.
• One-Scene Wonder: The 2016 Film makes Fr. Rodrigues' wife into a mysterious character with no dialogue and barely more than a minute's screentime, but a tremendous impact on the film's final moments.
  • Jesus or at least Rodrigues' hallucination of his voice is also seen as this. With many stating that it was by and far the most powerful scene in the movie and another achievement in an already accomplished resume for Scorsese.
• The Woobie:
  • All the Japanese Christians, poor villagers who hold on to the faith long after the feudal converts abandoned it, and who practice it in defiance of the state. Rodrigues repeatedly notes that it was harsh that faith in God would add to the burdens of people living such bleak lives and it's one of the reasons that he undergoes a Crisis of Faith.
  • Kichijiro is a weak sad coward who had to watch his family suffer and burn to death for their faith (including perhaps his wife) while he apostatized out of weakness. He is eternally haunted by guilt and self-loathing which he can't get over, making constantly self-destructive actions and crazy risks, but still burdened by a need for salvation which he knows he doesn't deserve and will probably not receive.

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