Memoirs Of A Geisha (Screen Daily Review)

[dleedlee]

Memoirs Of A Geisha

Mike Goodridge in Los Angeles 21 November 2005

Dir: Rob Marshall. US. 2005. 137mins.

Rob Marshall’s film of Arthur Golden’s bestselling 1997 novel Memoirs Of A Geisha is brimming over with all the stunning detail, production opulence and visual splendour that a Hollywood picture with a budget in excess of $80m and a team of crafts experts can make possible. But Marshall, following up his blockbusting film debut Chicago, is finally unable to convert the unputdownable nature of Golden’s book onto film. Although they possess long, compelling stretches, these celluloid Memoirs ultimately prove uneven and end with a whimper.

If its awards and critical prospects are unsure, the film’s commercial life looks bright. Memoirs is always entertaining and adult audiences will relish the story of bitter rivalry in the world of the geisha – not too far removed from the rivalry between Roxie and Velma in Chicago.

International audiences especially will respond to the picture. Its success in Asian markets is almost guaranteed bearing in mind the star-studded cast of Chinese and Japanese talent. But Europeans too, whose curiosity for foreign cultures is greater than in the US, will welcome this glossy insight into a tantalising world rarely covered on screen.

Success in the US – where it opens on Dec 9 – is not certain. Sony, which brought in Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum’s Spyglass Entertainment to co-finance the film, is spending heavily on the US pre-release campaign, opting for bold imagery, gorgeous trailers and Marshall’s pedigree to woo a wide audience, since actor names like Ziyi Zhang and Gong Li have little sway with middle-American multiplex viewers.

Without critical raves, the film may struggle, but as is the case with Hollywood economics these days, the domestic release is not the exclusive focus on a film like Memoirs. International grosses should make up for any domestic shortfall.

Ironically, for all the advance consternation about the fact that Chinese actresses play the lead Japanese roles, Spyglass and Sony are anticipating that the film will be a major hit in Japan. Japanese audiences have embraced Hollywood films like The Last Samurai and The Ring, which are rooted in local culture and Memoirs also boasts some star Japanese names in Ken Watanabe, Koji Yakusho and Kaori Momoi.

Whether Ziyi Zhang, whose films House Of Flying Daggers and Hero have been hits in Japan, but whose image is resolutely "Chinese", can win over Japanese audiences as a Japanese character is still up in the air. Golden's novel itself was also a flop in Japan, so there are negatives to overcome.

The film is related as a memory in a cliché-heavy voice-over by the lead character Chiyo aka Sayuri, presumably in advanced age. Her story begins in 1929 as she and her sister are sold by their penniless father to work as servants in the geisha district of Kyoto. The girls are separated when only Chiyo (beautifully played as a child by Suzuka Ohgo) is accepted in an okiya (geisha house).

The first 40 minutes take place in Chiyo’s childhood as she struggles to escape from the geisha and find her sister, then accepts her fate when her sister leaves the city without her and news arrives that her parents have both died.

Although she spends her youth cleaning up after the okiya’s star geisha Hatsumomo (Gong Li) and the young geisha-in-training Pumpkin (Zoe Weizenbaum), Chiyo longs to be a geisha herself, especially after she is befriended one day in the streets by the kindly and handsome businessman known simply as The Chairman (Watanabe). Her advancement is always thwarted, however, by Hatsumomo who is threatened by the girl’s beauty and treats her with disdain and brutality.

When she reaches her late teens and she has morphed into Ziyi Zhang (the actress formerly known as Zhang Ziyi, who has reversed her names to a western style for this film), Chiyo is unexpectedly taken as an apprentice by Hatsumomo’s main rival the legendary Mameha (Yeoh).

Hatsumomo is furious, although the okiya boss Mother (Momoi) is delighted, seeing Chiyo as a future source of revenue once Hatsumomo loses her lustre.

Mameha trains Chiyo to perfection and introduces her to men on the teahouse circuit. Adopting a new name Sayuri, the beautiful young geisha meets The Chairman again, although it is his friend Nobu (Yakusho) who shows the keenest interest. Although frustrated by the scheming and gossip of Hatsumomo, Mameha starts a bidding war for Sayuri’s virginity, a traditional procedure which will show her protégé’s true financial worth.

The film takes a turn for the worse when the character of Hatsumomo leaves the story. As the geisha whose appeal is starting to fade, Gong Li, in her first western film, brings a potent blend of viciousness and vulnerability to the screen that gives the story its edge.

On her departure, the war intrudes and the film becomes episodic and consequently a little boring. By the time Sayuri finally tells her feelings to The Chairman, Marshall has lost his grip on the audience. Too many years are covered in too few minutes for the underdeveloped romantic elements of the story to have an emotional impact on viewers.

Although she struggles to enunciate clearly in English, Zhang is absorbing in the lead role. As we have seen from her Asian films – Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and 2046 among them – her mesmerising features alone can hold the screen. Memoirs is no different, and Marshall wisely realises that Zhang can reveal more in a close-up of her face than trying to explain her emotions in awkward English.

Yeoh is the perfect third complement, bringing a moving maturity to her part of Mameha, the supreme geisha who, unlike Hatsumomo, has learnt to suppress her own needs and desires for the sake of her patrons.

As he did in Chicago, Marshall has gathered a brilliant team to recreate his period world, and Oscar nominations, if not the trophies themselves, should be rained down on the below-the-line talent.

Cinematographer Dion Beebe, production designer John Myhre, costume designer Colleen Atwood and makeup artists Noriko Watanabe and Kate Briscoe stand out, especially since most of the film was shot on sets in Ventura County in southern California.

John Williams’s score, peppered throughout with glorious cello and violin solos by Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman respectively, is of course lush and, like many of the visuals on show in Memoirs, a little too sweet.

Production companies
Amblin Entertainment
Columbia Pictures
DreamWorks Pictures
Spyglass Entertainment

US distribution
Columbia Pictures

International distribution
Spyglass Entertainment/Sony Pictures Releasing International

Executive producers
Roger Birnbaum
Gary Barber
Patricia Whitcher
Bobby Cohen

Producers
Lucy Fisher
Douglas Wick
Steven Spielberg

Screenplay
Robin Swicord
from the novel by
Arthur Golden

Cinematography
Dion Beebe

Production design
John Myhre

Editor
Pietro Scalia

Music
John Williams

Main cast
Ziyi Zhang
Gong Li
Michelle Yeoh
Ken Watanabe
Suzuka Ohgo
Koji Yakusho
Youki Kudoh
Kaori Momoi
Tsai Chin
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

[dleedlee]

And a Hollywood Reporter review

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/re ... 1001525055

[bkasten]

"Zhang Ziyi, who has reversed her names to a western style for this film"



I'm feeling ill.

[MrBooth]

Apparently "Ziyi Zhang" is her official western name these days, and her manager gets cross if people write it the other way - presumably "going with the flow" is preferable to having magazines constantly refer to her as "Miss Ziyi" :p

[ewaffle]

The review in "Variety" as well as the Reuters review made the point that most of the depth of character and wealth of detail in the book (written by an American who spent years on Japan) has been lost in the movie--which is generally the case, of course.

[sbxabyss]

don't know if anyone saw this article on reuters about "memoirs":

http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArtic ... =0&summit=

[Brian Thibodeau]

Love this comment about Hollywood from an unnamed member of the Kyoto Traditional Musical Art Foundation:

"Hollywood has always done things like ignoring history."

Mm-hmmm...

(of course, knowing the various biases present in today's media, they could've made this guy up just to stoke the flames).

[LCanau]

Apparently "Ziyi Zhang" is her official western name these days, and her manager gets cross if people write it the other way - presumably "going with the flow" is preferable to having magazines constantly refer to her as "Miss Ziyi" :p

They assume that the "average Westerner" would never understand that Chinese names are "reversed", which is a pity. People learn things when they see it or read it several times. If you keep "translating" it for them they will never learn. In the local media, nowadays I think around half of the film critics "get" Chinese or Korean names, but a couple of years ago you'd have to look a lot to find someone who wouldn't say "Mr. Kar-wai" or "Mr. Yun-fat".

The reversing of the names should simply not happen. You can't avoid to have a text or a file with several names in which some are reversed and some are not, which adds to the confusion. This happens when people use a commonly know name for the director (in the original form), then get a couple of actor names from the IMDb, for instance.

If Zhang's manager would force her "Western" name when it appears near Gong Li or other Chinese name, it would help people assuming wrong family names. Call her Jacqueline Zhang instead! No confusion that way.