At the age of 81, Martin Scorsese is not playing it safe.
Decades after demanding that Hollywood notice him with the one-two punch of “Mean Streets” and “Taxi Driver,” and long after he placed himself in the pantheon with a string of classics that includes “Raging Bull,” “The King of Comedy,” “Goodfellas,” “Casino” and whatever else you want to drop into that list, he has spent the last 10 years working on an epic scale. In 2013, there was the rampaging “The Wolf of Wall Street,” bursting with the raucous energy of a director a fraction of his age. Three years later, “Silence,” a shattering two-hour-and-40-minute meditation on faith.