Memoirs of a Geisha can be well summed up in one word: beautiful. From cinematography to music, from production design to art direction, from set decoration to costume design, it is breathtakingly beautiful from the first scene to the last.
The movie is only the second feature film from director Rob Marshall, but with his abundant experience on stage, he has an unerring eye for beauty. The movie tells the story of how a fish village orphan, Chiyo, becomes a famous geisha, Sayuri (played by Ziyi Zhang). Unfortunately, Arthur Golden’s original book is not strong enough to build a whole movie on. Golden’s book is an interesting read of Geisha culture and training and offers readers a peek into Japan’s history from 1920s to late 40s, but when it comes to the central love story, it reads more like a melodramatic paperback romance aimed for teenagers. Marshall successfully transfers the book’s look and atmosphere onto the big screen and has done an excellent job condensing pages of geisha training into about 15-minute screen time. Marshall combines quick editing with presto music to emphasize the intensity and urgency of Sayuri’s training. It is apparent that Marshall’s choreography background has enabled him to orchestrate the sequences in a smooth and masterful fashion; however, when it comes to telling the love story, there is little he can do to improve upon what Golden has in the book.
The casting of three Chinese actresses (Michelle Yeoh is Chinese-Malaysian.) in the lead roles has caused little ruckus in Japan but loud protest in China. Because of the bad blood between the Chinese and the Japanese due to WWII, Chinese people have called Ziyi Zhang and Li Gong (who played Sayuri’s arch rival, Hatsumomo) traitors for playing Japanese geishas. I believe that China has much more to celebrate about from this movie than to condemn it. The movie proves that these three Chinese actresses are the most recognizable Asian faces in the movie world today. The studio cast them clearly with international box office and dollar signs in mind. All three actresses are well known throughout Asia and Europe and they have been steadily building a fan base in the States thanks to Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and all of Yimou Zhang’s Chinese movies. All three had made People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people in the past. In 2005, Ziyi Zhang was also on Time magazine’s list of world’s 100 most influential people. The magazine called her “China’s gift to Hollywood”. Ziyi Zhang is poised to become one of the biggest Asian stars in Tinseltown. All three have done a competent job in this movie, but Zhang and Gong’s struggle with English has limited their ability and may have also forced the screenwriters Robin Swicord and Doug Wright to write more simplistic dialogue to the detriment of the movie. I wish Steven Spielberg had made this movie years earlier with Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung in the lead. (Spielberg purchased the right to Golden’s book years ago and Cheung was long rumored to be attached to the project; however, Spielberg kept pushing off the production in order to make other movies and Cheung eventually dropped out of the project. In the end, Spielberg decided to only assume producer’s role and let someone else direct the movie.) Cheung may have been a little too old for the role, but her fluent English and superb acting skill could have been a great boost to the movie. In this movie, the best performance belongs to Kaori Momoi who plays Mother, the owner of the geisha house in which Sayuri grows up. Mother could easily have become a loathsome character, but Momoi humanizes her instead of caricaturizing her. Her Mother character is probably some one who has gone through plenty of hard times and learned to put her self-interest and self-survival ahead of everything else. Even though Momoi is also not a native English speaker, she manages to turn it to her advantage. She delivers her lines in such a slow and calculated fashion that it fits her character’s manipulative mentality perfectly.
In 1937, Hollywood adapted Pearl Buck’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Good Earth, for the big screen. It used an almost entirely white cast to portray a Chinese farmer’s lifetime story. Since then, Hollywood has come a long way to have its first all-Asian big budget production. As for some people’s assertion that a movie about Japan should be headlined by Japanese actors, Gong answered eloquently in her interviews, “As actors, we seek roles that challenge and inspire us. Think of all the amazing performances that would be lost: Meryl Streep as a Polish woman in ‘Sophie's Choice’; Russell Crowe as an American in ‘The Insider’; Ralph Fiennes as a German in ‘Schindler's List’; Vivien Leigh as an American in ‘Gone With the Wind’; Sir Anthony Hopkins as an American president in ‘Nixon’.” If Katherine Hepburn could play a Chinese woman in Dragon Seed and Luise Rainer could win an Oscar for O-Lan in The Good Earth, who is to say that Asian actors cannot play roles of other Asian descent? I only hope that Memoirs of a Geisha is simply a start for Asian actors and Hollywood will have more rich roles created with them in mind.
5 Comments:
Yes. It’s a shame they used Chinese actresses. They are not at all believable. Its like having Will Smith play Neil Armstrong. In any case I have yet to see a good actress from China. I suppose the lack of a viable Chinese actors, actresses and movie industry may be due to the extensive piracy in the home market. For now the only hope for struggling Chinese actresses are movies like this that want to keep costs down and do so by settling for an inexpensive generic cast rather than be true to the story.
What about that movie Crouching Tigars Hidden Dragins? That was a movie a lot of people saw.
Crouching Tiger is a great example of a complete failure – or at most a baby step. I can explain its commercial “success” with an analogy. Suppose a family has a child late in life and this baby is 15 years younger than its older siblings. When the baby says her first word all her brothers and sisters gather around to see and hear the primitive “mama” blurted out and they clap and praise the baby. It’s the same thing with Crouching Tiger. China took a baby step. Everybody wanted to see it and heap praise upon China’s first but extremely crude attempt at producing a real movie.
People flying from tree to tree, wow - how innovative! The classic American film The Wizard of Oz had hundreds of flying moneys and it was a much more realistic scene than Crouching Tigers ever accomplished. Oz also had better costumes, better sets and a compelling story. Then consider that Oz was made in 1939 well before the days of the computer generated movies. In the last decade any computer savvy college kid could make a Crouching Tiger.
Crouching Tiger’s success is simply due to its birth in a primitive backwater country like China. Had Americans made the film it would have grossed exactly $346. Expectations are much higher for American films because they are several orders of magnitude better. There are a lot of reason China will never produce a truly world class film. I’ve been to China many times to close O&G deals. It is a horrible, dusty, dirty, poor place. There are zero constructively creative people. I counted three types of people in china. First, the robots, these are usual engineers, accountants, factory workers and business people. Second are the criminals. These are violent thugs wandering the city streets among the peasants. China doesn’t like to admit its violent crime problem, but it is huge. I had an encounter with one of these thugs but won’t get into the gory details here. And finally, the white-collar criminals, i.e. business people that get ahead by bribing cheating and stealing. These are the only Chinese that show any creativity but they use it in a negative way.
This lack of constructive creativity along with unopposed communist oppression and censorship are why China will never become a cinema powerhouse. Even the most educated are weak, sheepish robots that don’t in the slightest way oppose the overt censorship of news and opinion. It is a very sad state indeed. Eventually China’s cheap labor advantage will fade and it will be unable to support continued growth. The criminals are already a dominant destructive force. The long-suffering peasants will rebel and the country will fall to pieces.
The good news is that Hollywood will be there to make a great movie about the crushing collapse of the Chinese Imperialists.
personal attack expert, could you elaborate how chinese engineers show their creativity in a negative way? Without them, where could you give all this shit? Guess even your family members are sick of your sickness inside the house, if you own one!
Folks, let's ignore this expert, who constantly visited this site for stimulation. This is the best argument we can hold against him. He must admit his naivete if he answers my question :)
By the way, I agree the "baby step" part regarding the movie, Crouching Tiger, but it doesn't mean that China produced no great movies. It is up to the western countries to know this "orient" better and China to be more successful on commercials!
Is it my fault Xiao has alienated all her friends? If not for me this board would be silent. I’m beginning to feel like this is Chinese post and maybe that explains the attacks on me, the “evil” South American. It’s the classic Chinese “group think” mentality. Xiao takes the lead and writes a post and everyone else says “good job” no matter how off base it is. Nobody questions anything. I can almost hear the robotic - “We must follow our leader Mao, oh uhmm Xiao. We must destroy MovieExpert ”. Good - it just proves my point about the lack of creativity and debate in Chinese society.
Amom – I am afraid it is you that must “admit his naiveté”. Chinese engineers show their creativity in a negative way by copying every invention of the civilized world for the manufacture of pirated Chinese versions. If China could be held responsible just about everything its engineers invent (i.e. copy) would involve many patent infringement lawsuits. But China can’t be held responsible because it has no respect for intellectual property. Why is that? The answer is simple. China has created no intellectual property worth protecting so they ignore the concept because it cannot benefit them. Why does China have no intellectual property? It is so far behind, so backwards that its engineers are better off copying than inventing. I have dealt with this personally many times. We are careful about screening the Chinese customers we sell our equipment to but you cannot control to whom they resell. In short order our patented proprietary technology shows up in Chinese manufactured equipment. Our engineers invent and their engineers copy, or rather, steal. They even have the impudence to use virtually the same model number and color schemes!
Amon – You said “Without them, where could you give all this shit?”. First your use of potty-mouth vulgarities certainly doesn’t enhance this board’s discussion. Don’t disrespect Xiao’s civility. Second, I detect a bit of Gore syndrome - are you saying the Chinese invented the Internet so I can “give all this shit?”
Final point – my observations don’t apply to Chinese outside of China. Once given a good dose of western education, creativity and freedom to debate, Chinese can unlock their hidden potential and become anything from massage therapists to senators.
Post a Comment
<< Home