Memoirs of a Geisha
Overall rating: 35%
Allow me to take you back to the summer of 2004. I had possibly the best job ever; a newsagents with no customers. I was free to eat sweets and read magazines at my leisure. Why am I telling you this? Well it was during one 12 hour shift that I ran out of crap magazines and embarked upon reading Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha. It transformed my boring day, and as a consequence became one of my favourite books.
When I heard they were making Memoirs into a film with Steven Spielberg at the helm, I was a little excited – I mean, he did an awesome job bringing Schindler’s List to life, why couldn’t he make this book work? But then Steve dropped out and passed the torch to Rob Marshall, whose only other feature film was Chicago (a complete wankfest which was vastly over praised!). I died a little inside. The final straw was finding out they had cast 3 Chinese actresses for the main roles and that they were filming in English. (Neale’s side note – Since this film is set in Japan, this is like casting Sean Connery as an upper class Englishman. And filming it in German.) I was totally prepared to hate this.
In a way I wish I had hated it, as that requires some passion. Instead this film falls into the realms of what I like to call Schmeh-ism, in other words indifference.
The film opens in a small fishing village in pre-war Japan, here an impoverished father with a sick wife sells his two daughters Chiyo and Satsu to a Geisha house. They are rapidly taken away to a more modern and colourful world – 9 year Chiyo is accepted by ‘mother’ to potentially learn the art of becoming a Geisha. The older Satsu’s fate is far less dignified.
Chiyo soon learns the way of the Geisha (which means artist and not prostitute, something the film overemphasises) and unwittingly incurs the wrath of the house’s most successful girl, the bitchy Hatsumono (Gong Li). It is these earlier scenes that I really enjoyed as the young actress playing Chiyo (Susuka Ohgo) fully harnesses her spirit and drive as she attempts to find her sister. Despite that fact that her unnatural blue contact lenses make her look blind!
The problems come as Chiyo ages and is played by Ziyi Zhang. Chiyo finds herself taken in by Hatsumono’s bitter rival Mahema (Michelle Yeoh). Determined to make Chiyo the most famous Geisha in Japan, Mahema pulls out all the stops and what was once rivalry turns into all out war as Hatsumono adopts Chiyo’s friend Pumpkin as her apprentice.
Chiyo is given the new name Sayuri and it seems like there is nothing she cannot do, except that is win the affections of her childhood crush – a man known only as the Chairman (Ken Watanabe). Despite her fame and fortune, Sayuri still aches for her unrequited love.
Eventually her world is turned upside down by the war and her happiness is destroyed by betrayal. It is here that the film lost me; I was simply no longer interested. Without some of the simple details found in the book, the plot just becomes soap opera-esque.
I know that some book-to-film discrepancies were only to be expected, but the problem with this film runs deeper than that. The main issue being Ziyi Zhang – don’t get me wrong, I respect her as an actress (you only have to see 2046 to see she has screen presence), but she just wasn’t the intelligent and driven Sayuri the book so lovingly portrays. I’m not sure if it is do with the fact that she doesn’t quite understand the words she has to say, or perhaps she just wasn’t comfortable portraying a Japanese woman. Either way the blunt truth is this: Sayuri has no personality. And you just cannot go the distance with a character you don’t care about.
The other actors fare a little better; Gong Li is superb as the diva Hatsumono. Equally Michelle Yeoh bring gravitas to the role of mentor Mahema. It’s just a shame the script has simplified each of them into these stereotypes. Ken Watanabe does his best to portray the Chairman despite his character having been altered the most – it’s his indifference towards Sayuri that makes the book all the more touching. The show is stolen by Youki Kudoh who plays Pumpkin, the girl forever in Sayuri’s shadow, it’s her who we ultimately feel most empathy for as the underdog.
The picture has two saving graces: the cinematography and the score. The music and visuals are stunning throughout and manage to catch the eye long after the brain has disengaged. But there are moments that feel like they have just been put in to look pretty.
In the end, Hollywood just isn’t equipped to handle a story such as this. Whilst we know that Geisha means artist and not whore, there are some aspects of the more seedy nature that the film glosses over in true Western style. Such as the perverted Dr Crab, who in the book collects young Geisha’s virginity (whilst this is referred to, it is done in an inoffensive manner). Also the film does not give sufficient information about the Geisha culture – I was often left wondering what certain words meant.
It does make me wonder why they tried so hard to appeal to a Western audience. The book had a select target and the film equally so, I just don’t see those into romcoms and horror queuing up for this. Let’s face it, if you’re intelligent enough to read a book, then subtitles should be no problem. A wasted chance to make Hollywood history methinks.
In Summary:
If you have read the book the film will sit rather uneasily. If you haven’t read the book it will probably just bore you. Easy on the eye but numbing on the brain!