Memoirs of a Geisha

There's always something a bit creepy about movies like Memoirs of a Geisha. Like that 90's non-starter Dangerous Beauty or even the pinnacle of the genre, Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern, these films seem to feel that setting a tragic story of forced prostitution in the exoticized past somehow takes the sting out of it. You wouldn't have an overwrought, melodramatic romance set in the present-day about a woman sold into slavery and forced to sell her body to remain alive. But dress it up in fancy costumes, play obscure songs on the mandolin on the soundtrack and put everybody in pancake make-up, and suddenly these films are epic and touching, rather than slightly unsettling. We can enjoy a movie about a woman who accepts viewing her body as currency because this was a long time ago, and it's not like that any more. (Right?)

At least Yimou's film has the self-awareness to consider the story from all angles. It's as much about the long-term trauma these women would have to face as it is anything else. A film like Memoirs of a Geisha flirts with some of these issues, before settling down with the idea that, hey, it may be rough on some of these broads to leave their families, think of themselves as property to be bartered and sold and ruthlessly compete with friends and sisters for male attention, but gawsh, they sure is purty. And nimble. And quiet when men are speaking!



I'm not gonna deny that the film, indeed, is purty. At least, more so than Marshall's garish, primary-color heavy adaptation of Chicago. The film took home 3 technical Oscars, and it's not hard to see why. I'm not certain the costumes, sets and cinematography were the year's most creative, but they are exactly the sort of thing the Academy loves to award. The film is glossy, large-scale, colorful and seems to strive for detailed accuracy.

At least, accuracy in terms of aesthetics. Marshall's not really concerned so much with historical accuracy, in that he has cast many of the roles with Chinese actresses even though the entire film is set in Japan. This is odd, because a lot of Americans (myself included) can, in fact, tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese people by appearance. I understand that there are more well-known Chinese actresses in America than Japanese, for whatever reason, but are Zhang Ziyi and Michelle Yeoh really so famous in this country, to make a movie that would otherwise dwindle in obscurity a popular hit? Is it worth sacrificing the believability of the entire film to get the name "Gong Li" on a poster? I'm not saying it definitely isn't, but I'm skeptical.

And then, of course, there's emotional accuracy, which the film doesn't exactly have in spades. I'm not saying that a movie of this type - an old-fashioned mainstream Hollywood period romance - has to neccessarily play by all the realism rules. This is a genre with enough room for Titanic and Gone With the Wind. You almost expect a little bluster.

But the entire film is built around a love story that just doesn't connect. We know the protagonist feels genuine love because she won't shut up about it in the voice-over, not because the performances really communicate any sort of passion behind all the make-up and restrained tea ceremonies.

A smarter movie might ask if Sayuri (Ziyi) is capable of love, after a lifetime of being cruelly jerked around by men and women alike. Doesn't she, in fact, respond to the first person ever to show her genuine kindness, who also happens to be a wealthy Chairman (Ken Watanabe)? Is latching on to the only one who treats you with dignity actually True Love, or is it just self-preservation? An interesting question, and one Marshall and screenwriter Robin Swicord can't dismiss quickly enough. Of course she loves him, they seem to say...He looks nice in that suit, he's played by the only famous Japanese guy for American audiences, and he buys her a goddamn Cherry Ice! What kind of piss-poor sensualist are you?

When she meets The Chairman (a title that clearly implies something other than Frank Sinatra to Japanese people), Sayuri is just a little girl named Chiyo (Suzuka Ohgo as a child). She must undergo years of harsh geisha training (like kung fu training, only with more focus on balance and less on kicking) before she can hope to win the Chairman's heart. Unfortunately, even after years of learning at the knee of geisha Mameha (Yeoh) and enduring the abuse of the bitchy Hatsumomo (Li, in the film's only really juicy performance), Sayuri becomes entangled with the scarred businessman Nobu (Koji Yakusho) instead of her beloved Chairman. Dang.

For all its focus on the dark mysteries at the heart of "the geisha," the film hews pretty close to formula at all times. Often, it feels more like getting a sidelong glance at the world of geisha than being plunged right into the thick of things. Genuine filmmakers can introduce a foreign historical environment, and really involve the viewer in the inner workings of the place. In the first 10 minutes of Gangs of New York, to take one random example, Martin Scorsese really brings a totally abstract historical concept for most Americans - the slums of old New York - vibrantly alive. In Robert Altman's Gosford Park, the film's first hour is really spent acclamating the viewer to all the various guests as a turn-of-the-century British manor.

Marshall's film, on the other hand, is like a peek at 30's Japan, not an up-close treatment of the real thing. After nearly 2.5 hours with this film, I could tell you a few things about geisha - their virginity was an auctioned-off commodity, for example, or they often were presented with kimono or jade combs as gifts - but not so much about their lives or experiences, and even less about the time in which they lived. Historical events are occasionally mentioned - fighting in Manchuria, the on-set of WWII - but the film takes place entirely within the sheltered perspective of one character, and spends no time developing a world around her petty squabbles for geisha house dominance.

But even as Sayuri's story, the movie's more about her looks and performances than about her life. Marshall's more interested in the look of a cherry blossom as it floats on a pond than the inner lives of the woman carrying umbrellas around that pond. That's why Sayuri and everyone else essentially remains a blank...How is she supposed to represent the cool mysteries of the exotic East if she's like a regular old real woman? Late in the film, a long-time friend betrays Sayuri, and this decision is surprising not only because of its placement in the story, but because we have had literally no inkling of an idea that this friend might wish Sayuri ill. The choice comes completely out of thin air, determined by the needs of the plot rather than anything that has come earlier in the film.

I suppose, in this way, Marshall's mindset's the perfect match for this material. Just as Japanese businessmen admired geisha for their exterior qualities - their poise, their beauty, their posture - and hoped to forget there was even a dreary real woman beneath all the glamour, Marshall admires his characters for the way they look exclusively. His interest stops with the way they wear make-up and costumes, the way their bodies catch the warm red light he's always throwing on them. (This was true for Chicago as well, but more forgivable considering that film is a musical).

Memoirs of a Geisha is very nice to look at, even when it's totally ludicrous and predictable. There's the gratuitous scene of the woman standing on a mountaintop tossing aside the token of love she's borne with her lo these many sad years, the kind of scene that's in every movie like this, and it's hard not to be a little taken-aback by the sheer scope of the shot. We twirl around a mountainside, waves crash on the craggy rocks belong, the beautiful Zhang Ziyi sheds a single tear as a handkerchief whooshes around her in the wind. It's nice, and probably very expensive to realize.

But it's not really cinematic, in any real sense. We gain no insight into Sayuri from the shot, or from any other. She's a blank, on to which the viewer, like the Japanese businessmen, can project their fantasies. Or, you know, project something or another, because otherwise you'd get bored.