DVD Town Reviews MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA

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I have never seen any theatrical productions directed by Rob Marshall. However, I have seen the two movies that he has directed, and from what I´ve seen, I´m not impressed with Marshall. It amazes me that people were willing to throw many millions at a guy without a proven track record. Yes, "Chicago" grossed north of $170 million in North America, and it won several Oscars (including Best Picture). Still, that was only Marshall´s first movie, but Sony and DreamWorks saw fit to give him $85-million-plus for "Memoirs of a Geisha", an adaptation of Arthur Golden´s best-selling novel with the same title.

"Memoirs of a Geisha" suffers from the same problems as "Chicago" did. Both movies are mis-cast. (Renee Zellweger was awful in "Chicago", with her only good performance being her appearance in "Jerry Maguire". Oddly, even though he is Japanese, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa has a face that doesn´t look "right" in "Geisha".) Both movies have sequences that are edited so furiously that you get a headache from watching the screen. Both movies have dizzying camerawork that make you nauseous. Finally, both movies are simultaneously frantic and draggy; everything is at once rushed and curiously inert.

In "Memoirs of a Geisha", the nine-year-old Chiyo (Suzuka Ohgo) and her slightly older sister are sold by their father to a pimp of sorts. In turn, the pimp sells Chiyo to a geisha house and Chiyo´s sister to a prostitution establishment. At the geisha house, Chiyo has a chance of being trained as a cultured "companion" who can sell artistic skills. For never explained reasons, Hatsumomo (Gong Li)--the geisha house´s lead geisha--rains hate on Chiyo from the instant that she takes notice of the young girl. Eventually, Chiyo is denied the chance to become a geisha herself, though she has to work as a slave in her geisha house. This includes helping her friend Pumpkin (played as an adult by Youki Kudoh) prepare for geisha-hood. (Zhang Ziyi plays Chiyo from the age of fifteen onwards.)

One day, the nine/ten-year-old Chiyo meets The Chairman (Ken Watanabe), a kind man who happens to be escorting two geishas even though he´s married and has children who are probably Chiyo´s age. The Chairman buys Chiyo a tasty dessert, gives her some money, and gifts her with a monogrammed handkerchief. This compels the plucky heroine to pray to be able to meet The Chairman again and to be a part of his life. At this point, the movie embarks on a series of geisha-on-geisha manipulations that are both clear and confusing.

Chiyo gains a mentor, Mameha (Michelle Yeoh). The movie never makes clear if Mameha is a part of the same geisha house as Hatsumomo and Chiyo are. If yes, then why does Mameha get to live in her own place? If no, then why doesn´t Chiyo simply live with Mameha instead of living in danger with Hatsumomo?

Other questions abound. If Hatsumomo is so good at making money for her geisha house, then how come she doesn´t seem to have a patron like Mameha and other top geishas do? If Hatsumomo does have her own patron, then why doesn´t she live on her own the way that Mameha does? If The Baron (the aforementioned Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) is Mameha´s patron, then why does he help Hatsumomo attempt to discredit Chiyo as Chiyo attempts to sell her virginity to the highest bidder? If Mameha and others sternly warn Chiyo that geishas are not prostitutes, then why is Mameha so proud of selling her virginity and Chiyo´s? What happened to The Chairman´s wife and children? Before anyone tells me that I can find these answers in Arthur Golden´s book, let me reiterate that a successful movie will not require me to retreat to a book to understand what´s happening in front of my eyes; a movie has to work on its own terms.

The "love story" involving Chiyo and The Chairman is rather perplexing. We never see the two spend significant time together having meaningful conversations. Therefore, the two characters essentially hardly know one another. This isn´t so much a love story as it is an infatuation story. Perhaps The Chairman is truly taken with Chiyo´s beauty and artistic skills. Perhaps Chiyo clings to the notion of being in love with The Chairman as a way of psychologically distinguishing herself from other geishas, thus not having to face the reality that she wants to use the kind Chairman as a means of escaping to a good life. These are honest motivations, but the movie does not have the courage to employ them. Instead, the screenplay asks us to believe that Chiyo and The Chairman really do love each other. Please, don´t tell us--show us what you want us to believe.

Like Michael Bay´s "Pearl Harbor", "Geisha" treats World War II as an inconvenience. Oh, darn, we have to put our love affair on the back burner while a bunch of people in uniforms run around. Well, at least "Geisha" disabuses viewers of the notion that American GIs were noble liberators. American soldiers are shown to be as lewd, lascivious, coarse, and corrupt as all military conquerors have been in human history. This is the one truth that the moviemakers are willing to confront.

The movie basically begins with an unnecessary crutch--voiceover narration. Voiceover narrations rarely work, and as with Morgan Freeman´s voiceover narration in "Million Dollar Baby", the voiceover narration in "Geisha" treats viewers as a bunch of simpletons who can´t understand the obvious even when the obvious is beating them on their heads. We´re literally told what we can see for ourselves, and whenever the voiceover narration talks about Chiyo having too much "water", I groaned and rolled my eyes.

The repeated references to Chiyo´s nature as being analogous to water doesn´t work; this kind of thing is suitable to literature but very difficult to express in cinema, and Rob Marshall and screenwriter Robin Swicord made the water analogy laughably bad. The water imagery would´ve been fine had the movie not used voiceover narration at all. In that case, cutaway shots to rivers and streams could´ve been used as elegant transitions to indicate the passage of time. Instead, every time we see any body of water, we are reminded that Chiyo is "like water", that she can mold situations to her advantage. The movie´s resolution betrays this because we discover that Chiyo´s destiny was engineered by someone who, even if Chiyo failed to become a famous geisha, could´ve rescued her from Hatsumomo´s grasp.

I felt that the actors´ lack of ease with English hurt the movie. This was different in "The Last Samurai", in which Ken Watanabe´s character was supposed to speak English with difficulty. Here, the characters are supposed to speak English with fluidity since English is "Japanese" in the movie´s world, but I was so busy fighting to understand what the actors were saying that watching the movie was frustrating. Actors like Koji Yakusho (who plays Nobu, The Chairman´s friend) choke on their dialogue, and actors like Tsai Chin (who plays a worker in Chiyo´s geisha house) employ exaggerated enunciation patterns that reek of racist fare from Hollywood´s past. Rob Marshall admitted in an interview that he and the sound team edited the actors´ line deliveries during post-production to obtain "better" pronunciations for certain words. What Marshall should´ve done was cast people who don´t swallow their words when speaking in English and let the actors speak English without trying to sound "Japanese" (which no one can unless you are really Japanese and learning to speak English for the first time).

On the whole, the movie´s attitude towards Japanese culture is suspect. I suppose the moviemakers wanted to show the world how much it respects the Japanese and wanted to avoid biting the hand that fed them (Sony, a Japanese company, owns Columbia Pictures, the Hollywood studio that owns most of the rights to "Geisha" the movie). Thus, the movie doesn´t condemn Japan in any way. I´m not referring to World War II, which is an incidental footnote in the movie. I´m most-concerned about the movie refusing to condemn child prostitution. Yes, it´s true that, in many civilizations, young girls often started having sex early in their lives for a variety of reasons. What about the fact that young girls are usually terrified of sex? What about the fact that young girls are usually forced to have sex? It doesn´t matter that sex with young girls may have been widespread and "socially acceptable" in Japan; in life, some wrongs are truly wrong.

Japanese culture fetishizes many things via elaborate rituals. This includes many facets shown in "Geisha", such as holding parties just to look at trees, the selling of a geisha´s virginity, and the very idea of geishas themselves. Rather than simply observing geisha life, the movie fetishizes fetishization. Uncomfortably, "Geisha" seems to suggest that, despite the wild machinations, the cruel pains, and the general sorrow of the era it depicts, people like Chiyo and The Chairman are happier in a world of fetishism than in a world stripped of artifice that allows them to be together.

John Williams´s music score is generally excellent. Cello solos by Yo-yo Ma and violin solos by Itzhak Perlman are lush, moving, and elegaically sonorous. Williams also employs Japanese instruments and drums to great effect. I especially liked how Chiyo´s training was accompanied by drum beats that gave the impression that Chiyo was prepping going to war instead of prepping to dance. The swirling arpeggios do justice to the water motif better than the voiceover narration and the characters´ references to Chiyo´s "water" nature. The "Geisha" score is one of Williams´s best efforts in his long and storied career. However, even the score isn´t without fault. "Going to School" (Track 3 on the CD soundtrack) is a variation of the opening credits music in "The Last Emperor". When I heard "Going to School", I started giggling in the theatre. What Chiyo and Pumpkin going to geisha school in Japan have anything to do with red Chinese calligraphy on a black background prefacing a movie about the last emperor of China is beyond me. Maybe Williams thought that since Chiyo was basically the last of the old-style geishas, it was appropriate to link Chiyo and Aisin-Gioro Puyi.

To be fair, the movie has its share of unimpeachably outstanding qualities. Without Hollywood clout, the cast members couldn´t demand handsome salaries. Therefore, most of the $85-million budget was spent on the movie´s fantastic costumes and sets. "Geisha" is wonderful eye candy. I have never seen kimonos more lovely than the ones used for this production. The sets and locations look like a believably real world. A scene that takes place in a cherry-blossom garden is much more stunning than a similar scene in "The Last Samurai".

The first act is carried ably by the cute, sweet, heartbreaking Suzuka Ohgo. Although she doesn´t speak English, her dialogue deliveries in English are better than anyone´s (with the exceptions being Michelle Yeoh, who has spoken English for years, and Zhang Ziyi, who has been practicing diligently during the past two years in order to land her role in "Geisha"). Ohgo has a pluckiness that manifests itself in a wonderful physical performance; despite her youth, she acts with her whole frame and not just her face.

Gong Li´s performance doesn´t gel with the others, but she is interesting in her own way. Careening wildly and drunkenly, Gong Li is an unstable live wire who gives the movie its best (though probably unintended) laughs and a pulse. When Hatsumomo does something vile, it´ll take all of your self-control to keep from hissing at the screen. If a performer can elicit strong reactions in a mostly lifeless feature, then she´s done the best that she can given the material.

Zhang Ziyi´s performance is rather muted compared to her recent work in "2046" and "Purple Butterfly". She is not required to do much other than express the hopefulness that Chiyo carries in her heart. As such, like Suzuka Ohgo, Zhang Ziyi relies on her cuteness to win the audience´s sympathies. The movie also makes good use of Zhang Ziyi´s dance background. In several sequences, we see Zhang Ziyi learning geisha dances, dancing at parties, and dancing at a special event that is basically Chiyo´s debut. Zhang Ziyi´s training and discipline is strongly evident, and in these moments, "Geisha" approximates a documentary--not necessarily of real geisha life but at least of Zhang Ziyi´s graceful athleticism and physical expressiveness.

The movie is also an interesting assemblage of meta-theatrical gestures. There was some amount of furor over the casting of ethnic Chinese actresses instead of Japanese ones in the lead roles. The moviemakers explained their choices by talking about casting for roles instead of casting along strict notions of ethnicity. However, when casting the role of a Japanese woman, doesn´t it make sense to cast a Japanese woman? As some have mentioned, Misaki Ito would´ve been a great addition to the cast of "Geisha". The real reason for casting Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, and Michelle Yeoh is the ever-increasing profile of all-things-Chinese on the international scene. Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, and Michelle Yeoh are arguably more famous than any Japanese actress alive today. Also, the more that the Hollywood studios curry favor with Chinese audiences, the more that the Chinese government will allow Hollywood access to the Chinese market.

Watching the movie, one can´t help but wonder if Gong Li´s animosity towards Zhang Ziyi is more or less real. Each actress has worked several times with Chinese director Zhang Yimou. Gong Li was once Zhang Yimou´s lover, and there were rumors that Zhang Ziyi was also Zhang Yimou´s lover. While Zhang Ziyi has talked about worshipping Gong Li, Gong Li´s publicly stated reaction to any "tension" between the two Zhang-Yimou muses is that professionals will do their jobs without letting their personal lives interfere with work. Ouch.

In one scene, after torching her geisha house, a disheveled Gong Li exits from the movie. As she watches Gong Li leave, Zhang Ziyi thinks to herself, how can she hate Hatsumomo, whose fate might´ve been hers, too? There was a time when Gong Li disappeared from the acting scene, and there was a general feeling that Gong Li wasn´t capable of delivering a good performance outside of a Zhang-Yimou picture. This can be taken as Zhang Ziyi meditating on her own career. She could´ve been like Gong Li, but she has been lucky.

In the movie, Michelle Yeoh takes Zhang Ziyi under her wings. They even address each other as sisters. This parallels their characters´ relationship in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" as well as their real-life relationship as veteran and ingénue. Finally, Zhang Ziyi plays a young woman who becomes the most-famous geisha in Japan despite fierce competition from numerous rivals. This mirrors Zhang Ziyi´s emergence as the most-visible Chinese actress both in China and on the world stage.

A lot of money can buy a lot of things, but no amount of money can buy you a good movie. I have a feeling that "Memoirs of a Geisha" could´ve been turned into a decent movie in the editing room, with the focus re-oriented on geisha life rather than on Sayuri´s infatuation with The Chairman. As it is, Rob Marshall´s (so-called) vision is a huge mis-fire.

On DVD Town´s "10"-scale, "Memoirs of a Geisha" gets a "4".

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