Why I like Silk

One of my favorite movies is 'Silk.'It is shot against an innocent landscape of provincial France. The lush, golden tones betray the dark central theme of the movie: a husband has an affair.The mistress is a Japanese woman (I'm probably even more drawn to the story due to my shared heritage with THE OTHER WOMAN) he meets on a voyage to secure silk worms for his village. Though he loves his wife, he is inextricably drawn to this geisha, and is knitted emotionally to her for the rest of his life. To make matters worse, the wife (played by Keira Knightly-LOVE HER EYEBROWS) unquestioningly loves her tortured husband with silent devotion. Yeah. You really feel bad for her.Japan and France seem to be juxtaposed. Japan is wild, untamed and unpredictable. France is controlled, beautiful, elegant. In a way, the countries seem to be the two women in the husband's life. The geisha is mysterious, elusive, and alluring. His wife, schooled in etiquette and domestics, is gorgeous and contained.There is a snapshot of the geisha that the husband has in his mind, an image he returns to even as he walks along the cobbled streets of France, millions of miles from Japan. It is of the geisha in a river, resting her hand delicately on the surface of the water. The image is enticingly exotic.The most poignant part of the movie is built off of this image. The husband is lying in bed in France and his wife is standing by a basin of water. He is staring into the distance. And he doesn't see. He doesn't see that his wife has gently laid her hand on top of the water, expressing the same exotic, feminine beauty of geisha.I LOVE IT. It's so sad, the missed moment-which is representative of the missed love. The wife had all the bewitchment of the mistress. But the husband didn't see what was right before him. It reminds me of life, how we can pursue things relentlessly without seeing that what is most valuable and most fulfilling may be something we already possesses.SPOILER ALERT! If you haven't seen Silk, stop reading!What is even sadder is that at the end, after the wife has died of illness, the husband sees that image again. Only this time it is the wife in the river. He realizes he has lost all he had ever wanted.
-Autumn