Martin Scorsese is finally making a film he's been wanting to make for many years: a screen version of Shusaku Endo's novel Silence (1966).Scorsese had originally planned to make Silence after Gangs of New York, but he chose to do The Departed instead.Filming in New Zealand this year, Silence will feature Daniel Day-Lewis, Benicio Del Toro, and Gael Garcia Bernal -- an all-star ensemble, if you ask me.The novel tells the story of a young Portuguese Jesuit, Sebastio Rodrigues, who goes to Japan in search of his father in faith, Cristvo Ferreira, who, it is said, has apostasized under the brutal persecutions of the Shogunate (persecutions that would soon lead to the closing of Japan to all contact with the outside world).It's not hard to see why this story fascinates Scorsese -- violence, faith, doubt, betrayal come together in a tale that is shot through with a deeply Catholic "tragic sense of life."The film will be released in 2010. It will be tough to watch, but I'm willing to bet that it will be one of Scorsese's best. I hope it will draw many people to the novel, a twentieth century masterpiece.