Review

Review Date: 7-January-07
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Jubilation!

The Painted Veil (2006)

The prices have gone up at my art house again, but in the case of "The Painted Veil" I still consider admission a bargain. After all, it would cost a grand to fly to China and untold ingenuity to travel into the 1920s and the hearts of my fellow man, yet such a journey is what the movie provides. With breathtaking scenery, wonderful acting, and a story of subtle depth, "The Painted Veil" is an epic that shouldn't be missed.

Adapted from the book by W. Somerset Maugham, the film begins with the whirlwind marriage between a reserved bacteriologist (Edward Norton) and a London lady at loose ends (Naomi Watts). While Walter Fane has fallen for his bride at first sight, Kitty Fane has accepted him only because she has been deemed a failure by her parents and a society where a woman's job is to marry well and young. Accompanying her husband to his post in Shanghai, she succumbs to boredom and takes up with a man who better conforms to her notion of a romantic lover (Liev Schreiber). This occurs despite Walter's best efforts to accommodate her needs, which attempts occasion the first of many scenes where Watts and Norton make interpersonal challenges look weighty and real.

The affair being discovered, a bitter match of wills erupts between the Fanes in which Walter gets the upper hand by bundling them off to a rural (and beautiful) region where a cholera epidemic is raging. It's a suitable prison for the wayward wife: in addition to the constant presence of death, there is nothing for her to do while Walter works long hours and very little opportunity for socializing. The only other whites in the area are a debauched English soldier (Toby Jones) and a group of nuns who run an orphanage. On top of disease and loneliness, there's the threat of violence from locals caught up in national growing pains.

Trapped in a loveless marriage and a dangerous purgatory, in part by her own nature and upbringing, Kitty appeals to the mother superior (Diana Rigg) for a chance to make herself useful. (The marriage is not only loveless but suicidal, with each half trying to one-up the other in vitriolic disregard for his or her own existence). While helping at the orphanage she undergoes a quiet but significant change. Getting a glimpse of her husband at work, she starts to view him as a noble crusader instead of a drip and, most importantly, to feel that she's not unworthy of him. Thus emboldened, she induces him to confront their unsuccessful past and accept an apology from an imperfect person who might become a true partner. Walter (who does possess the compelling nobility that only Norton can exude) is freed by his wife's growing self-awareness and their newfound understanding. It's then up to fate to decide whether to give them happily-ever-after.

"The Painted Veil" feels old-fashioned in its historical scope and the cultural constraints of its characters, but it also feels timeless. The confusions and emotions at its heart are essentially human and as expertly drawn as their context.

Copyright © 2007 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.