Based on an aesthetic novel by Alessandro Baricco, Silk tells the 19th
century story of a married silkworm trader who sneaks into the forbidden
Japanese countryside to obtain undiseased silkworm eggs, which are no longer
available in Europe. While in a remote Japanese village, he becomes obsessed
with a beautiful woman who is the concubine of a local warlord. He spends the
rest of his life balancing his genuine love for his beautiful French wife with
his longing for a woman on the other side of the world, in a sense failing
both women, to his eternal sorrow.
Silk is a study in contradictions, in high aspirations failed and achieved in
equal measure. If you were to make up one of those top ten lists which seem
ubiquitous on the internet, you might list this as one of the ten most
beautifully filmed movies you have ever seen. You might also list it as one of
the ten most boring. In either case, I would glance through your list and see
nothing to dispute. Perhaps I would think you might have exaggerated a bit because you had
recently seen the film and wanted to stress your point, but you would not have
made an unreasonable claim in either case because it is a film which can never find the proper balance
between aesthetics and narrative.
One example will illustrate. The trader makes a trip to Japan. He leaves his
French villa in a stately carriage and rides past glorious farms and gardens. He
rides interminably in a train car as spectacular vistas pass behind him. He
rides a caravan through the Asian deserts in blistering orange heat, and another
through the icy Russian steppes in shivering blue cold. He sails through
magnificent Asian gorges on 19th century river craft. He stands on the prow of
an old-fashioned ocean-going ship and casts a stalwart gaze forward as he
proceeds in his final step from Asia to Japan. Then he treks through the
forbidding and starkly beautiful Japanese countryside until he finds the
picturesque snow-covered village he seeks hidden in a mysterious fog-shrouded
valley. Then he returns, and we watch the same journey in reverse. Then he makes
the same trip two more times, and the cinematographer repeats the travelogue.
I could cite more cases where the pace of the narrative was destroyed by the
magnificent aesthetics: tea ceremonies where the camera follows the intricate
rituals performed the concubine's delicate hands, for example, but I think I've
made my point. The film is not only languid, but also unrelievedly melancholy.
There is far too much narration, and it is done in a whispery, regretful tone.
In fact, virtually every word uttered in the film seems formal and lacks
passion, as if spoken in confession, even when those words are uttered by
Japanese warlords ... even when uttered by Alfred Molina, who is normally a
natural and boisterous performer. The entire film is accompanied by either
painfully sad Japanese music or the incessant tinkling of languorous and
melancholy piano chords.
I really like this director's other efforts, namely 32 Short Films about Glenn
Gould and The Red Violin, which could easily have been renamed Several Short
Films About the Same Violin. They are intelligent and aesthetic. The Red Violin
is a lovely meditation on the nature of beauty, which elements of it are
culturally inspired and which are constant across the human experience. It is
one of the few "art films" that I endorse wholeheartedly. But there is a key
difference between those films and this one. This one has no more plot than any
of the vignettes in the earlier films, but drags out five times as long. Or
maybe 32 times as long. Another key difference is that the titular violin in the
previous film was owned by a variety of people in distinctly different cultures
in different eras, thus allowing the filmmaker to weave a rich and piebald
tapestry, with the different colors and fabrics provided by the contrasting
temperaments of the instrument's owners as well as the diverse mores of the
times and lands in which they lived. Silk, on the other hand, is monotonous,
even though its settings range from a tiny French village to an isolated
Japanese village, because everything seems to be accompanied by the same
melancholy tone of music and narration. After what seems like an eternity of
whining nancy-boy voice-over which leads nowhere, the film finally does slip in an
unexpected plot twist right at the end, but by then most of the audience will
have fallen asleep.
The film also has a problem with the conventions it employs. It is about French
and Japanese people, but they are all speaking English. So when the Japanese
warlord makes the surprising demonstration that he speaks Oxford English, I
suppose he is actually speaking academic French, right? Huh? Improbable as it
seems that the warlord of an isolated Japanese village can speak like Voltaire,
it does not end the mystery of the film's linguistic conventions. The Frenchman
speaks to a Dutch trader in English. Is that English representing French, or is
it just English? If it is English representing French, then why does the
Dutchman address him in French, and then ask him if he is French? If he didn't
know that, then why would he be speaking French to him in the first place? This
exchange would only make sense in English, right? I don't "get it." To make
matters even more confusing, the director required all the English actors
playing Frenchmen to speak English with a North American accent. Huh? Why didn't
he just let Keira Knightley and Alfred Molina speak in their natural accents?
Why does it make more sense for American English to represent French? Again, I
didn't understand why the director chose this convention, and it probably hurt
Keira's performance because the modern American accent made her seem younger and
dumber, more like a 20th century American valley girl than a sensible 19th
century schoolteacher. (It made no difference to Molina, who is so good with an
American accent that most people think he is American, ala Christian Bale.
Bottom line: I can't recommend the film for most moviegoers, and most critics
panned it, citing Michael Pitt's lead performance as especially problematic and
disappointing. One can't help but wonder how the same story might have turned
out if filmed by Ang Lee and performed by a French and Japanese cast in the
proper languages. But I will tell you this: I will buy this film on Blu-Ray, and
if the day should ever come when it is shown in IMAX, I will be the first in
line that day. For all its flaws, it is a marvel to look at. Cinematographers of
disappointing films rarely get enough credit for their work. They are the babies
thrown out with the bathwater. (Perfect example: John Bailey's work on Forever
Mine.) But the cinematography and locales in this film are so beautiful that I would sit through the entire
tedious thing one more time to see these magnificent
images. Silk may not be a great drama, but it's a helluva travelogue.
