Review

Review Date: 26-December-05
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)

You have to chuckle when a movie starts with the narrator saying, "A story like mine should never be told" and then goes on to prove the wisdom of its words. Columbia Pictures thought it had proven material for an epic in Arthur Golden's novel Memoirs of a Geisha, but without having read the book it's difficult to understand why. I can detect no compelling reason why anyone would want to film such an uninspired tale unless he was one of those guys who has a thing for Asian women (I'm onto you, Rob Marshall!). "Memoirs of a Geisha" has all the trappings of the Oscar contender it's supposed to be, but it lacks the most important central element: a story that's worth the telling.

The actresses (who are indeed beautiful) represent the upper echelon of Chinese cinema, and it will be unfortunate if American audiences remember them as the two-dimensional Japanese characters they play here. The memoir recounts the ordeals of a fisherman's daughter (played as a girl by Suzuka Ohgo) who is sold to a city establishment that houses and markets geishas. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't clearly show what it meant or was like to be a geisha, but leaves one with an impression of something closer to a classy (though enslaved) escort than a common whore. (Certainly common is the bitchy stereotype embodied by Gong Li as the house's resident tigress.) The sexual role of these companions-who-aren't-wives is particularly confusing and becomes more so as the heroine grows up (to be portrayed by Zhang Ziyi), becomes the protégé of a superstar in the field (Michelle Yeoh), and takes the professional name of Sayuri.

The movie could have been interesting if it addressed the place of the geisha in Japanese society (here circa 1940, but I assume the calling is a longstanding one). Sayuri's experiences reflect presuppositions about the value of women and their relationship to men, which, though probably offensive to modern western tastes, might have given the story weight. They might also have helped to explain the affections that dictate Sayuri's fate. While still a child, she meets a businessman (Ken Watanabe) who buys her a Sno-Cone, and in that moment we're meant to believe that mutual love was born. However, with little personal development or context, she's just a pretty face and he's just a middle-aged man who was smitten by a 12-year-old girl (eew) and watched her mature to sell her virginity to the highest bidder. Even his gesture of stepping aside when he thinks an old friend (Kôji Yakusho) wants Sayuri for himself demands a cultural reference to make it seem noble instead of hideously unromantic. As love stories go, this one is distasteful and anticlimactic, but it might have resonated as an improbable or lucky pairing if its cultural setting were better understood.

Yet the movie's focus is on setting at the shallowest level: the lush scenery, lavish costumes, and stirring music that suggest exotic realms and an air of the sensuous. The atmosphere is passable for a matinee, but "Memoirs of a Geisha" never ventures beyond the backdrop of someone's unoriginal fantasy.

Copyright © 2005 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.