SansPretense

In case you don’t know me, I love movies. To me, a good movie is as much a work of literature as a great novel, containing within its “pages” and scenes a window into the human experience. I’ve watched four movies this weekend. Two of them I may or may not review in the future, but the other two really cried out to be written about. Both of them, coincidentally, are Keira Knightley movies, and both, also coincidentally, are movies you have to watch all the way through to really hear their message.

Silk is about a silk-merchant who has the most wonderfully loving wife in Knightley, but, even though his love for her never wanes, becomes obsessed with the beautiful concubine of a Japanese warlord. The merchant makes several trips to Japan through increasing danger for his object of obsession, almost costing him his life. Without spoiling the plot, it’s hard to write about the most meaningful aspects of this movie in much detail. It’s central message is quite clear, however, and the movie makes it with a loud boom before it’s all over: sometimes the best things in life are right in front of us, but our foolishness causes us to look elsewhere. The protagonist of the movie realizes it very clearly in the end, but I’ll leave out this very beautiful line so that you people (both of my readers) will go watch the movie. The movie easily gets 4/5 stars. The movie is based on a novel, of course.

The movie Atonement is in a whole new level of beautiful. Everything about this adaptation of a novel (of course) adds to the masterpiece. The cinematography is exquisitely beautiful. The music, based on the “tap tap tap” of a type-writer at every step of the way unfolds the story in a way I’ve never heard before. Whether it’s the “tap tap tap” of the type-writer itself that leads to the symphony of sounds or a “bang bang bang” of the mother of the falsely-accused beating on the hood of the police car screaming out “Liars! Liars!”, this movie is being told as much by the orchestra as the the characters. The interplay between music, scenery and landscape, dialogue and plot reminds me very much of the Sergio Leone’s masterpiece The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. The movie’s central message is one of atonement for the sins of the past - whether they’re sins we’ve committed or someone else. The effects of a single falsehood, in this movie, destroy the lives of several people. Can one atone for such a sin? That’s an important question, one that many of us are constantly facing. One thing is clear though, the events of the past have a lasting effect, and it is usually impossible to just return to the way things were before. This movie is an easy 5/5, and I will buy it as soon as I get the money.

Both of these movies show something that many of us long for: unconditional love. Both the heroines in these movies stood by and faithfully, unfailingly, loved men through the hardest of times. They were seperated from their loves for extended periods, and never once wavered. Rent these movies ASAP. They’re wonderful.

And maybe one day I can find a love like that…just without having to go to prison or have a Japanese warlord put a gun to my head…