Judging by the first trailer, Martin Scorsese’s new film Silence looks to be There Will Be Blood levels of brutal in its story of resolve and dedication.

It sees Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield play two Jesuit missionaries in 17th century Japan who go searching in the foreign land for their mentor, played by Liam Neeson.

It’s the kind of emotionally demanding role you don’t want to rush into, and Garfield spent the best part of a year preparing for it.

“If I’d had ten years, it wouldn’t have been enough to prepare for this role,” he told the New York Times this week.

“I got totally swept up in all things Jesuit and very taken with Jesuit spirituality. The preparation went on for nearly a year, and by the time we got to Taiwan, it was bursting out of me.”

Silence - Trailer

His research apparently culminated in a seven-day silence retreat at St. Bueno’s Jesuit house in Wales, which Adam Driver also took part in around the same time.

They couldn’t speak though, and so, ‘pledged to silence’, the two actors apparently simply ‘waved when they spied each other in the refectory’.

It seems Garfield was pretty taken with the religion.

“On retreat, you enter into your imagination to accompany Jesus through his life from his conception to his crucifixion and resurrection," he explained.

"You are walking, talking, praying with Jesus, suffering with him. And it’s devastating to see someone who has been your friend, whom you love, be so brutalized.”