>>REVIEW
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA
STARRING Ziyi Zhang, Ken Watanabe and Michelle Yeoh
DIRECTED BY Rob Marshall
If the Americans had known that the Japanese all speak English and phrase things in wooden heroic aphorisms, they might never have decided to go to war. I mention this because within the first 10 minutes of Memoirs of a Geisha, all of the characters begin to speak English, with varying degrees of success.
It’s a hint to the soulless shell of this film – a North American fantasia of a softcore prostitute’s life, with no interest in exploring Japanese culture and postwar life. I’m sure the life of a geisha is much more complicated and subtle than what this film proposes, but instead director Rob Marshall counts on his audience to be disinterested in history and culture.
Memoirs follows young Chiyo (later to become Sayuri) as she is sold to a geisha house in Kyoto by her broke father – her sister being not so lucky, ends up in a whorehouse. She spends her first few years doing household chores, until given the opportunity to go to school and become a geisha, much to the consternation of the star geisha in the house, Hatsumomo, who sees her as a threat. Sayuri runs into "the chairman" (Watanabe), a wealthy industrialist who himself has no story and she inexplicably falls in love with him, devoting her life to the possibility of his love.
I had my reservations about Geisha after hearing that the film had been in pre-production hell for a few years and that the real geisha that author Arthur Golden based his novel on denounced the book as a callow robbery and misrepresentation of her life. I guess Americans (i.e. Spielberg, who produced the film and originally was going to direct it) like hearing the Cinderella story over and over again, where impossible dreams are made, the evil woman gets her comeuppance, and true love finds a way. Funny that when the American soldiers enter the scene, they act gruff and dumb, fumbling with sexual advances like sweaty adolescent virgins.
The film is being praised in some quarters for its visuals, which is hardly surprising – being filmed primarily on sets in California, there’s a cramped attention to detail that will dazzle many. Aside from one truly beautiful scene where the young heroine Sayuri is performing on stage (which Marshall ruins by forcing his camera away from her to show the audiences’ stupefied reactions), the whole process is pomp and nothingness. If anything, Geisha will either intrigue those to seek better, honest representations of Japanese cinema, or make them wish they had gone to see King Kong. |
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