TinsHeadline Touches You

Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

J-bot6 Excellent cinematography and fine performances. This is the first time I've seen Keira Knightley turn in such a subtle and faceted performance. It suits her well.Other reviewers complained about things like lack of subtitles for the Japanese dialogue, lack of emotion in the performances, lack of believability in the infatuation that takes place in Japan, and complaints that the film was 'too slow'.First: The Japanese dialogue didn't require subtitles. An observant viewer could figure out what's going on easily enough.Second: This is one of the few films out there that actually dialed-down the tendency to over-act scenes. For this reason, it's a more realistic portrayal of human beings. I'm noticing a definite increase in the number of people out there that can't seem to identify subtle emotions. Not sure what's up with that. It's a disturbing trend.Third: Clearly people who don't believe the in-Japan romance portion of this film have never experienced love at first sight (or maybe they're inexperienced in relationships).Fourth: Complaints of this genre of film being too slow are ridiculous. My advice for people who have this complaint is to stick to action films (or practise observing and acknowledging visual information). Maybe take up hiking or an art class. That might help.In summary, if you have a sophisticated eye for film and are mature enough in areas of romance (failed or otherwise), this is a film that you'll likely appreciate.

sjackieveronica Silk translates Alessandro Baricco's unusual novella into a film which succeeds in capturing the other-worldly atmosphere of the succinct and emotionally charged novel. The story links French 19th-century idealism to the remote and closed feudal society of Japan in the context of French silkweaver, Baldadiou, who ambitiously sends his protégé, Herve Joncour, to Japan in search of undiseased silk-worm eggs. Herve and Baldabiou represent the never-ending quest of man for ideals and perfection. Herve is romantic and deeply loves his wife Helene though that does not stop him being mesmerised by Japan and its cultural foreign-ness, epitomised by a beautiful concubine with whom he becomes obsessed. Baldabiou is obsessed in finding the perfect silk-worm eggs and producing perfect silk, trying to emulate the beautiful Japanese light-as-a feather silk he'd once seen.And of course, there is the Dante-esque journey - Herve's adventures travelling across the world from France to Japan at a hazardous and dangerous period when he risks his life each time is symbolic. Finding fulfilment or the disillusionment of ideals? The symbolic one-handed pool game which results in Baldabiou leaving his work and his town, and the death of Helene but the survival of her garden - all part of the story as a pared-down synthesis of man's troubled search for the meaning of life, and the film tries hard to capture this.Baricco conjures a magical realism in his short-chaptered book. Francois Girard manages to recreate the beauty expressed in the well-chosen words of Baricco, and convey the poignant love story, through a hypnotic musical soundtrack, evocative narrative, subdued colour tones, and a gently paced style. The main weakness in the film lies in the actors and accents. Keira Knightley and Michael Pitt are miscast, and their accents are terrible. The Japanese characters appear contrived, even Sei Ashina as the silent concubine does not really convince. However, Alfred Molina never disappoints: he is excellent as Baldabiou, and Miki Nakatani is assured as Madame Blanche.This film was a very expensive effort to conjure a story from a book in which language is the essence. It obviously never made back its outlay. Credit to Girard for the courage of his convictions but the result was not entirely satisfactory. Nevertheless, it is worth watching, but read the book - you'll see what I mean.

Anssi Vartiainen Beautiful images are not enough when it comes to movies, and this film is a major example of that. The very first scene of this film, that of a naked woman slowly being revealed from the mists rising from a hot spring, is very moving, artistic even, and filled with promise. We start to speculate, who is this woman, how does she tie in with the plot, what will she mean for our main character. Unfortunately scenes like this are pretty much all we get from this film. There is a plot, certainly, but the plot alone is not enough. An exciting plot is usually enough when we're dealing with an adventure or an action film, though in those cases good characters are also needed.This film, however, is a period piece, a historical drama, and those film, above all else, need good characters and excellent dialogue, because there's rarely anything else in them. Unfortunately this film has neither. The dialogues are barren, banal and lacking any insight worth sharing. I found my attention wandering whenever the characters were trying to have a conversation, because they weren't saying anything meaningful. These conversations offered us no insight into the characters, they were just there to hurry the plot along. But I could have overlooked that if the characters had showed any real promise. They did not, and they were easily the worst part of this film. The main character wasn't actually the worst offender, he was just about average. Rather all the side characters lacked any kind of personality, the Japanese above all else. And that's because they rarely talked at all or if they talked, they didn't talk about anything important. The scenes in Japan were nothing more than gorgeous scenery and silent mood pieces. And that simply wasn't enough. The scenery was beautiful to look at, but even it wasn't anything spectacular or new. I've seen them before in other period pieces set in Japan, many times over.Though, as far as characters go, I must say that the character of Baldabiou (Alfred Molina) was actually pretty entertaining. He felt like a real person. Unfortunately he was the only one of his kind.And then there's the drama, which also fails, because while the main character has our sympathies, it's hard to care for his relationship problems, when we never learn anything about the women in his life. They are there, sure, but they very rarely say anything and quite frankly the romance gets almost completely bypassed to make room for the pretty pictures of snow-topped mountains and steaming hot springs.So is it worth seeing? Depends on what you're looking for. If all you need is a film with moderately interesting plot and good-looking scenery, this might be for you. If you require believable and three-dimensional characters, engaging drama and new world views, I'd stray as far away as possible.

lor_ Silk was a flop, not the international success its backers had hoped for after the director's The Red Violin made such a splash a decade earlier. It is worthy of attention, in pinpointing some cautionary messages to other would-be Visionary (that recently overworked term) filmmakers.1. TRAVELOGUE: Film is unfortunately a highly literal, through visuals, medium, and it is easy to become mesmerized by the shots. Mature directors scrupulously avoid this pitfall, but perhaps Canadian director Francois Girard has subconsciously assimilated the approach of Terrence Malick. Like Malick, he only ventures forth from his artistic cave once a decade, and feels compelled to make each shot the most perfect and beautiful of all time. This is not cinema -this is "how I spent my vacation" -a $20,000,000 slide show.2. FOOLED BY THE RUSHES: It could be a by-product of the far-flung co-production status (Silk is structured officially as a Canadian/Italian/Japanese project, an unusual combo), but the movie displays an age-old problem of Hollywood, caused by over-monitoring of the rushes. Many a stiff, stolid film result has looked "marvelous" in the dailies. Studios traditionally made decisions like director firings or bringing in a troubleshooter to haul in the reins on a project based on the quality of the rushes. This makes sense in a bean-counter universe, but has nothing to do with the ultimate movie, which as Hitchcock noted, is stored in the director's head. Watching Silk I was struck that the rushes coming back from the various locations truly must have looked fabulous, but that is no indicator that they would ultimately amount to anything in a gestalt sense. Only the director and his editors know what will be needed in terms of coverage, and how the pieces might mesh into a whole. It's easy to get bamboozled by striking shots, just as at the other extreme it's easy to assume the worst when a neophyte director falls behind schedule and isn't giving the execs their daily meters of processed celluloid.3. DISTANCING: Brecht and Godard have long been the inspiration for film directors to keep the audience at a safe distance -break up the naturally hypnotic effect that a movie has for the viewer, which Hitchcock exploited to a fare-thee-well. In Silk, Girard uses the crutch of voice-over narration to sabotage one's involvement in the action/dialog/story. Like Zentropa, another pretentious exercise by a wannabe "visionary" director, the somnolent narration literally puts the viewer to sleep. His insistence on oft-criticized bland American accents for French characters further abstracts the story, and makes it near-impossible to smoothly enter into the life of the protagonists. Low affect is the instruction to lead Michael Pitt and even Alfred Molina, the latter bringing professional life to his rattled off exposition, and even some wit. Keira Knightley gets to actually emote in her patented shy-but-effusive manner, but I noticed the director cutting away from her as quickly as possible, and even though she is the key central figure of the story's romantic theme, her overall screen time is reduced to the bare minimum. The dialog by Girard and Michael Golding is almost all in the form of recitations: never sounding natural or using vernacular. That's as big a mistake as the bland American accents.4. CRYPTIC: Adapting a novel is difficult; perhaps this is why the Academy gives a separate Oscar category for adaptations as opposed to the Original Screenplay niche for the Woody Allens of the world. Too often a film (or TV) adaptation REQUIRES that the viewer be not just conversant but well-nigh totally immersed in the source work in order to appreciate the film. (I recently watched the British TV series A Dance to the Music of Time, via Netflix, after a marathon reading of all 12 Powell novels it's based upon, and the damn thing would have made no sense whatsoever without having the books fresh in my mind.) For Silk, many basic and virtually all nuanced elements are lost without knowledge of the source, a damning fault. The intended purity of not subtitling the Japanese dialog segments falls squarely into this problem area too. The movie should stand alone, and if it can't, why bother? It's not impossible -everybody's favorite of all-time The Godfather saw Coppola creating a work of art that never requires one to go back and read Mario Puzo's pulp novel.5. THE PITT FACTOR: Folks love to criticize young Mr. Pitt, an actor who future generations will scratch their heads over: "how did he get into so many films?". Pauly Shore, Phillips Holmes in the '30s, and many 4-F performers like Sonny Tufts and William Prince during WW II come to mind. Following the death of James Dean, for over a decade innumerable folks imitated his breakthrough persona, of which I recall Michael Parks and Christopher Jones becoming the most typecast. Now we have Mr. Pitt, the lookalike thespian doomed to live in the shadow of Leonardo DiCaprio, let alone his equally handsome namesake Brad. What a cross to bear! 6. UNLOCKING THE MYSTERY: I was reminded of Werner Herzog's overlooked classic Heart of Glass while watching Silk. Both films have transcendentally beautiful landscapes. Underneath the main romantic and cross-cultural themes, they have the same core parable: a one-industry community (Glassblowing in Herzog, Silk creation here) poised on the edge of disaster. Herzog hypnotized his cast to get a unique, otherworldly effect. Girard has Pitt & most others sleepwalking, to null effect.