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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Ziyi Zhang and Ken Watanabe in "Memoirs of a Geisha."
Pile into the rickshaw for a slooooooow ride: This very serious, very long, very pretty picture never really gets moving.
Dec 9, 2005 | Ah, the Christmas movie season. What better time for Hollywood to serve up a big prestige picture designed to open our eyes to the quaint cultures of other lands? This year: All aboard the Orient Express for "Memoirs of a Geisha"! This is a very serious, very long, very pretty picture about the life of a geisha in pre-World War II Japan, starring three of the biggest actresses in the world -- they happen to be Chinese, but let's not get too hung up on the details.
"Memoirs of a Geisha" -- directed by Rob Marshall, adapted from the novel by Arthur Golden -- will teach you many things about the artistry and discipline of the geisha, for which you will be grateful and leave the theater speaking in language that sounds as if it's been taken from the subtitle, although English is the language of the movie. "A kimono like this, made of Tatsumura silk! It will take you a lifetime to earn!" says one character, and believe you me, there's no way she could be wrong.
"Memoirs of a Geisha" is a bit like "All About Eve," but with lots of historical detail and some very fancy establishing shots. Fasten yourself into your rickshaw: It's going to be a bumpy night. A young, impoverished Japanese girl is taken from her home and sent to work as a servant in a geisha house. There, she meets top geisha Hatsumomo (Gong Li), a duplicitous schemer who, perhaps sensing that the girl will grow up to become a threat to her status, takes an instant disliking to her, devising ways to get her in serious trouble with the woman known as Mother (Kaori Momoi), who runs the house by very strict rules and perpetually smokes a very long, very evil-looking pipe.
Hatsumomo is right to fear this young girl: Under the tutelage of her mentor, another top geisha, Mameha (Michelle Yeoh), the child will grow up to be the lovely and accomplished Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang), a respected geisha whose company is desired by the most powerful and successful men. Mameha has wisely counseled Sayuri not to seek love from her clients. Even so, Sayuri is haunted by a memory from her hardscrabble childhood: A prosperous businessman -- he's known only as the Chairman, and he's played by Ken Watanabe with as much elegance as any actor could muster in an unwritten role -- once stopped on the street to show her a kindness, and she has never forgotten it. She treasures the handkerchief he gave her, hoping that one day he'll return her love.
It's not the plot that's the problem with "Memoirs of a Geisha." The story (the script was adapted by Robin Swicord) has all the bone structure of a great '40s romantic melodrama. I wanted to like the swoony business with the handkerchief, and to relish the way Hatsumomo urges the young Sayuri to do bad stuff, like dribble ink onto Mameha's prize kimono. What's more, it seems incomprehensible that with actresses like Zhang, Yeoh and Gong, "Memoirs of a Geisha" could be anything close to bad.
But there's no life, no juice, in the picture. Instead of tempting you into submission, it merely drugs you. It's surprising that a filmmaker who gave us such a lively debut, "Chicago," could slap us with a picture as dull and worthy as this one. Then again, maybe it isn't: "Chicago" is the sort of movie that marks a director as a crowd-pleasing showman; "Memoirs of a Geisha" could make people think of him as an artist. And what director doesn't want to be seen as an artist?
