“Memoirs of Geisha” is a famous novel which, because of its uniqueness and creatively presented wordings in the book, was made into a movie. As the book has garnered several good reviews from its readers, it is just predictable that thousands of moviegoers would flock into the movie houses and would be fascinated by the movie. And yes, there were thousands of viewers who flocked and watched the movie, but not all of them were satisfied with what they watched. It has then become apparent that the novel “Memoirs of Geisha” was downgraded and was not accurately represented when it was made into a movie.
When it comes to production and costume design “Memoirs of a Geisha” is one of the most beautiful-looking films in this modern age and time. Every scene seemed to be well-researched and carefully planned. However, many considered this movie as one of the most frivolous as well. The filmmakers have taken the source material — Arthur Golden’s best-selling novel — and turned it into a glossy Hollywood production with the overripe melodrama one would expect from a television soap opera, not a supposed epic drama.
First, it should be noted that the movie itself – Memoirs of Geisha – presented a different set of difficulties, in that Golden’s exhaustively researched novel is built on exposing a long-held secret, unscrambling the carefully constructed mythology of geisha. Westerners have long been thinking and mistakenly correlating that the rituals of geisha are an elaborately refined variation of prostitution wherein women were painstakingly schooled in the art of providing artistic comfort to men who could afford the undivided attention. Such a line of thinking has also become the source of fantasies and fascination for centuries. So it is very disappointing and quite unexpected that Marshall has followed in the glass-slipper footsteps of the unrelated Garry Marshall, turning “Memoirs” into a “Cinderella”- inspired variation on “Pretty Woman.”
The story begins in the late 1920s, when a widowed Japanese peasant shows up at an okiya, a combination preschool, and residence where geishas are trained, with his two daughters. The younger of them, 9-year-old Chiyo (Suzuka Ohio), is deemed by the owner, called Mother (Kaori Momoi), to have potential. Her older sister has whisked away to a house of far-less repute. The frightened Chiyo rooms with another girl called Pumpkin and are treated as a slave. Chiyo comes to understand and accept that if she does as ordered, she could someday have the status that the beautiful if disagreeable Hatsumomo (Li Gong) enjoys in the household.
Despite several attempts to run away and getting on the bad side of Hatsumomo, Chiyo recognizes the advantages of becoming a geisha. She’s encouraged by a kindly, refined stranger (Ken Watanabe) and the geishas who accompany him to the theater on a beautiful spring day. Her potential is recognized by Mameha (Michelle Yeoh), who rivals Hatsumomo as the most desirable geisha in 1930s Tokyo and who becomes Chiyo’s mentor and protector.
Chiyo, played as a teen and a woman by Ziyi Zhang, takes the geisha name of Sayuri. When she realizes she is a pawn in a power struggle, she decides she will do whatever it takes to be in the company of a powerful businessman known as the Chairman, who happens to be the same stranger who bought her flavored ice and restored her spirits on that day he was bound for the theater. The transformation of abandoned peasant to deeply desired embodiment of the impossible Sayuri’s highly valued virginity is this story’s Mt. Everest – coupled with her dream of being the partner of the Chairman – is the all-too-obvious plotline that Marshall hopes will enchant and distract the viewers from the fact that “Memoirs of Geisha” is just gorgeously made mush. It’s a fairy tale disguised as a historical and cultural excavation that could be mistaken for “museum quality.
More so, “Memoirs of Geisha” pretends to enlighten the viewers while catering to the affection for soap opera melodramatics and superficial appreciation for the beauty found in all things foreign. Many viewers even commented that they have not been particularly proud that the beauty-bombing by Zhang, Yeoh, and Gong kept their eyes on the screen – even when their mind was wandering to recall far better movies in which all have appeared, where their acting talents have been as impressive as their physical beauty.
The writer and even the director of this film even included a ridiculous, artificial ending created specifically for this film adaptation. And unfortunately, the climactic sequence undercuts the rest of the movie.
As for the casting of Chinese actresses in the roles of Japanese characters, that isn’t the issue. It’s more the “Hollywood-ization” of the material. Director Rob Marshall was the wrong choice for this project. He’s trying to create a particular look and style. But he includes a curiously out of place, geisha production number that appears to have come straight from his Oscar-winning film musical “Chicago.”
Marshall and his cast are saddled with a cliché-ridden script (courtesy of screenwriters Robin Swicord and Doug Wright), which reduces some of the characters to one-note caricatures, particularly Gong’s haughty Hatsumomo.
What is to be admired, as stated above, in this movie is John Myhre’s production design and especially for its gorgeous score, which features cello and violin solos by Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, respectively, and Colleen Atwood’s costumes. This, after all, is a celebration of ritual that must be respected even when there is nothing left to make it.
All in all, this movie should just have strictly followed the plot and overall concept of the book itself. The book is admired for its content and clear entanglement of every character, setting and even the symbolism and denouement, elements which were seemingly missed out in the movie. The movie tried to modernize what should be a classical or orthodox concept. The filmmakers were so focused on production design, effects, and other technicalities that they failed to give due consideration to other equally important elements of the movie.