In a story about a far stranger potential project for Martin Scorsese, ScreenDaily reports that the Oscar-winning filmmaker will start shooting the drama Silence in January 2012. This adaptation of the novel by Shusaku Endo about two Jesuit priests who travel to 17th Century Japan and face violence when they try to spread the word of Christianity is a project Scorsese has talked about doing going all the way back to The Departed. The likes of Daniel Day-Lewis, Benicio Del Toro and Gael Garcia Bernal have been attached to star in it, though no word on whether any of them are still in contention.
That other stranger project would team Scorsese with Denmark’s Lars von Trier as a follow-up to the latter’s The Five Obstructions reportedly to be called… The Five Obstructions. Von Trier and Scorsese first met and discussed the project in Berlin and according to the story, the latter will accept the challenge of the former to remake his classic ’70s crime-thriller Taxi Driver in five different ways, each time with an “obstruction” chosen by the eclectic Danish filmmaker. Previously, von Trier challenged Jorgen Leth to remake his 1967 film The Perfect Human, the results being compiled into the original The Five Obstructions.
ScreenDaily interviewed Von Trier earlier this year and he explained the premise behind the challenge:
“The idea behind this obstructions thing is that you give each other tasks which will move you into an area where you have been reluctant to go yourself. Under protest, you do that and then you enlarge your repertoire.”
