Customer Reviews
Visually Magnificent...but Dull Script Detracts From That 
2008-10-04
Well, I just finished watching Silk, and all I can think about is the hour and a half of my life I'll never get back...The scenery in this movie is a feast for the eyes, and the only pro as the dull and lifeless script made me fast-forward through most of the movie. I found the characters to be very underdeveloped, as well as the plot; specifically I had issue when Michael Pitt's character Herve develops an fixation with a Japanese concubine, which is a major reason why he makes repeated trips back to Japan (the backbone of the movie), seems very unfounded; the two have very little screen time and no dialogue, yet an "obsession" blooms. If you love historical fiction as I do, I recommend something more satisfying... like the English Patient, Zelery, Pride & Prejudice
Implications of Desire 
2008-08-29
This is a cinematic masterpiece -- the music, the scenery, the absolutely perfectly choreographed interactions of the characters (themselves beautiful and unpretentious in their portrayals)...the subtext is rich and multi-layered -- we are given an opportunity to see how desire, in its many forms, affects individuals and others around them -- how it informs and how it inspires and at times, controls us obsessively, even blinding us from the realities that are before us -- for many reasons. If you're patient, attentive, and open to the nuances that abound, this is a rewarding, rich film that is at times brutally candid and at others, dreamily opulent with wonder. One of my new favorites...I was captivated until the last note of the soundtrack was played.
A Story of Obsession 
2008-07-10
I read the novel `Silk' by Alessandro Baricco and loved it. Therefore, I was rather wary of seeing the adaptation. But when I saw the film, I was not disappointed; the visual imagery is beautiful and the Japanese symbolism was well-related.
The location of the story is France in 1862. Herve (Michael Pitt) is convinced by Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) to travel in search of silkworm eggs in order to save the silk-making business. Herve travels to Africa and Japan. During his trip to Japan, he falls in love with a Japanese concubine. When he returns home to France, he cannot forget the Japanese beauty and continues to obsessively long for her.
The untranslated Japanese conversations allows the audience to relate to the main character, as he too does not understand the language. Keira Knightly made a wonderful `Hélène' but I wasn't convinced by Michael Pitt as the main character `Hervé Joncour'; the obsessive inner turmoil wasn't portrayed well on screen. Overall, however, I think the film is well-worth seeing.
A lifeless, listless, loveless love story 
2008-06-19
Like many well-intentioned adaptations, "Silk" fails in its horrible execution. We supposedly have an adventurous silk trader, Herve Joncour (Michael Pitt), who undertakes the perilous journey from France to Japan in the mid-1800s in search of blight-free silkworm eggs that would ensure his village's prosperity in the silk industry. Married to a fetching wife and, from all accounts, in love with her, our intrepid traveler becomes obsessed with a Japanese concubine in his first trek to Yamagata. On the pretext that Japan's silkworm eggs are worth the frequent traveler miles, Herve returns to Japan to obtain yet another glimpse of his amour. We are obliged to accept that the largely lethargic Pitt traverses these thousands of miles (3 times!) by carriage, rail, ship, caravan and horseback, when it looks like he can't even get across town without being toppled by a strong breeze. Straining to evoke a Dr. Zhivago-like epic, it only succeeds at looking ludicrous. Permanently sporting a pout like a child scolded for playing with worms, Pitt mumbles in a monotone with one wooden facial expression all throughout, in perfect accompaniment to his sleep-deprived droning voiceover narration for the film's painful 110 minutes. As badly miscast and as anemic as Pitt's acting is, it is equaled, agonizingly enough, by the same lifeless performance of Keira Knightley as Herve's wife Helene. Mostly relegated to bidding Herve a spiritless goodbye whenever he departs and a spiritless hello whenever he returns, one wonders if the absence of affect and chemistry with the two was a joke on the audience that they secretly delighted in.
It may have been possible to forgive such lackluster acting if there was a story to behold. When the procurement of silkworm eggs is more riveting than Herve's infatuation with the unnamed concubine, then I know there's no redemption. I am as perplexed as those who've seen director Francois Girard's "Red Violin" in the `90s, a magnificent film that remains one of my favorites to this day. A feudal Japan of the 1800s, still closed to the west, with its warring warlords and bewildering culture would have been ripe for exposition, injecting the much-needed tensions and conflicts the film sorely lacks. To not have attempted to incorporate it in any meaningful way with the lame love story was a fatal mistake. At least, it could have given the dying plot a fighting chance. This is nothing more than another dull and dreary depiction of the white man's fantasy of the submissive, exotic female, a stereotype that really is getting old.
I'm no stranger to arthouse, but honestly, it's films like this that give arthouse a bad reputation. The fantastic cinematography in "Silk," with breathtaking panoramic shots of Japan in winter, cannot rescue this inferior film. I've seen nature documentaries on PBS with more gist and drama than this turgid exercise. Come to think of it, I've seen turtles with more passion.
Not much of a movie but Nude Scenes Are Worth a View 
2008-06-15
Kiera has three nude scenes though the first is darkly lit, the other two of her in bed with husband are decent though short. The lead Japanese actress has a topless scene and another actress as the geisha/concubine has a FFN and long love making scene ... and both Japanese actresses are cute as a button so worth a look for fans of nudity in film. The Japan scenes are gorgeous and are interesting visually. The movie - still life - though the nudity of the actresses is nice.
Silk (2007) 2008-06-14
Based on the best-selling novel by Alessandro Baricco, Silk is a visually stunning epic spanning two continents. Hervé Joncour's (Michael Pitt) devotion to his beautiful bride (Keira Knightley) is tested by increasingly, dangerous trade missions in search of silkworms for his towns survival. From his journeys to Japan, Hervé brings great wealth for his village, but with each return to the Far East he becomes torn by the temptation of a local warlords sensuous concubine and his love for Hèléne.
Save yourself! 2008-06-07
This was a beautiful movie. The sets were fantastic, the scenery was moving. It was, in fact, the only movement whatsoever in the entire production.
This movie was painful. Really, really painful. Nothing of any consequence happened... or seemed to. The story was all in the background, a context through which the characters altogether failed to move. Keira Knightly is breathtaking, but she and Alfred Molina portray the only two characters who seem to have any life to them whatsoever. She was really only in a few scenes, nowhere near enough to redeem this production. The main character was sodden, gloomy, and altogether uninteresting. The best single word to describe him would be "pathetic" if only there were some pathos, some connection between him and the viewer. Sadly, that connection so spectacularly fails to develop that, when I found that I had missed a line of muttered or mumbled dialog (the majority of the plot is conveyed via a sort of moaning, whispered narrative voice over) I found that I really did not care.
Save yourself, you'll never be able to get the two hours of your life back if you waste them watching this movie.
lifeless 2008-06-06
First, I have to say how wonderful the book is. As with most cinematographic adaptations, this one fails to bring the story to life on screen.
The actor's performance, and by that I mean Pitt's, is terrible. When you read the book, he certainly does not come to mind. His voice is not appropriate, nor is his age, for the role presented in the book.
That said, I realize that not everyone envisions books the same way, and that is a good thing (most of the time). However, in my eyes, the movie does not do justice to the writing style of Alessandro Baricco, author of the book "Silk".
The cinematography of the movie is beautiful, although at times one has to wonder why there is so much light in the Japanese houses. That seems overdone.
I found the movie much too slow, pointless and ... lifeless.
I had much higher expectations for it.
A disappointment.
A NICE CHANGE OF PACE 2008-05-20
This slow-moving, romantic tale may not contain a lot of conflict (read dramantic interest) but it sumptuously explores two worlds, France and Japan of the nineteenth century. For those who enjoy languid, atmospheric films on occasion or maybe a well-made, life-as-lived historical piece, then SILK is for you. SILK is certainly a change of pace from the many movies loaded with violence and dripping with message. Beware: This viewer found the ending required multiple kleenex tissues.
Vacuous Cocoon 2008-05-16
Based on the prose-poem novel by Alessandro Baricco, director Francois Girard's `Silk' excruciates its audience by trying way too hard to be a beautiful genre film complete with spectacularly photographed vistas of France and Japan, profoundly symphonic music and the kind of pretty crinoline-d costumes in which most bodice-ripping aficionados would want to be corseted. However attractive, `Silk' wears thin right from the get-go.
Michael Pitt, severely miscast as Herve Joncour (why not James McAvoy?), plays this 19th century purveyor of silk eggs--a supposed intrepid adventurer traveling from Lyon to Africa and Japan--with a spectrum of emotions limited to a flat line expression of distracted cherub-faced banality. Does anything faze this person? Is his cravat tied too tightly? Not really--Pitt spends most of the movie in kimono, so he's definitely comfortable. Nevertheless, when Herve experiences sensual exquisiteness--be it women (two lusciously yet polarly different beauties--the fair Helene (Keira Knightly) and the nameless dark and sultry Japanese concubine (Sei Ashina) or nature--- he flitters through a pastel flower-strewn rendition of Monet's France (Girard's scene at the beach captures in essence the painting "La Promenade, la Femme a l'Ombrelle") and meanders through a misty art house imagining of rural Japan that suggests the fragile Haiku tension of "Snow Falling on Cedars", he pouts with the one-note prissiness that stamps him as a graduate in fine standing from the quintessential "you'll-never-understand-me" school of teen television drama, "Dawson's Creek. With blue-green eyes that are quick to water - his only visual sign of emotion, other than a slackness of his full lips--he stumbles through 20 years of his life on a confused quest for his idea of perfection. Ironically, Helene, his wife, waits at home for the garden and child she has promised herself while he pants over his conceptualization of a woman with whom he has never spoken with the persistence and deadened optimism of a voyeur clicking through mega-sites of Internet porn.
So what's it all about and is it worth two hours of the viewer's time? No. Even for die-hard Knightly fans, `Silk' offers scant opportunity for this actress to really hone her craft and shine in any way other than that of a lovely accoutrement to an already lovely backdrop. She spends most of her screen time in a languorous pre-`Atonement' wait state-- I have come to think of this film as an exercise to her more intense character of Cecelia opposite James McAvoy in `Atonement.' There, too, her angular body is positioned in an ultimate welcoming or goodbye posture. Here, she is less bitter, her jaw still clenched while her arms remain outstretched ready to grab her errant husband to her bosom each and every time he returns from his trek for eggs. Sadly, unfulfilled in her inability to conceive a child or understand her husband's restlessness--of this I conjecture, as the plot of the film reveals little of the underpinnings of her mind--she conveys an overall feeling of the unessential role women, in general, portrayed in life then and perhaps, even in life today.
And just how are women depicted? If we enjoy a football game, we are inundated with glimpses of cheerleader's legs, breasts and swatches of long hair swaying. If we like cars or cameras, well, there is always a model or two glad to sell you the latest technological advancement while allowing a glimpse or two of their corporeal delicatessens. It comes as no surprise that there are certain women who sell their sexuality to make their way in a world that has been designed by men. Are we to believe that that is the only alternative? In `Silk,' a film intended to be appealingly romantic to women, we again are reminded that women hold a secondary role--the concubine does not speak, yet Herve is entranced--by what? Her subservience? Helene is fetching indeed, but as Herve doesn't seem to care, why should we? All those poetic musings in the Baricco novel come off as the usual stereotypical drivel that reduces women to commodities rather than flesh and blood individuals with needs of their own. Shame on you, M. Girard. I might as well watch the Speed Channel.
Bottom line? Don't waste your time or your money on this one. The plot is boring. The actors wallow in self-pity. Yes, the photography waxes aesthetic but you would do better with a picture book of exotic locales. The music accentuates the maudlin nauseating character study of the insipid Herve, but I'd rather listen to something truly impassioned like Rachmaninoff. Personally, I am tired of the mentality of depicting pretty women being flaunted as tidbits to make men's lives more comfortable, be it a Playboy spread or a tea ceremony. Enough already. I can deal with a little manipulation. Just show me some strength.
I awarded this movie two stars, both of which go to Alfred Molina as Herve's boisterous boss man. He is the only player that livened up the so-called action in this snore fest. Not recommended.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"
