[IP] Geishas Don't Prostitute Themselves; Sony Pictures Does
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: December 8, 2005 10:51:32 AM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Geishas Don't Prostitute Themselves; Sony
Pictures Does
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[Note A film review from friend Janos Gereben. DLH]
From: "JanosG" <janosg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: December 7, 2005 11:57:59 PM PST
Subject: Geishas Don't Prostitute Themselves; Sony Pictures Does
Not in its corporate solitude, of course. Rob Marshall, the
director, and the producers of "Memoirs of a Geisha" share
responsibility for this silly, messy Hollywood pulp fiction.
Somebody had this dynamite idea: take a stupidly inauthentic story
about Japan by a writer from Chattanooga, hire the top three
Chinese stars to play geishas, and make sure even the Japanese
actors in the cast act as if they were in a Bollywood epic. (Hey!
One corner of Asia or another - what's the diff?)
"Geisha" is not only messy and sappy and irritating, but it's also
disturbing - on so many levels. Given the flummoxing choice of
subtitles or English, Marshall & Co. opted for one of most bizarre
arrangements in film history. "Geisha" opens with a complex scene,
all in Japanese, without subtitles. After that, a mix of Japanese
and English is used, the latter in a hundred different accents,
some near-impossible to understand.
Not confusing enough? The adorable Suzuka Ohgo as the child "title
geisha" and Zhang Ziyi, as the grownup version, speak very
different "accented English," and on top of that, the narrator -
supposedly Ziyi - is yet another voice, another accent. Two other
principals - Michelle Yeoh as the saintly Mameha, and Gong Li as
the Lady Macbeth/Tanya Harding Hatsumomo - are something else
again: the former with a fine American-accented English, the latter
as a Hong Kong cosmopolitan.
Mako's Sakamoto could be from Brooklyn, but the male lead - Ken
Watanabe as Chairman - speaks his own lines with an accent thick as
Nagoya syrup.
Disturbing too is John Williams' Staru Waru percussive music, with
a few minutes of Japanese music and the Andrews Sisters. (Creating
a strange connection with "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe"
also featuring the good sisters - imagine jitterbugging with
LaVerne, Maxene, and Patty, from Kyoto to Narnia!)
Also disturbing is Ziyi's career-making dance as a geisha: a Pina
Bausch affair as co-directed by Robert Wilson, Peter Sellars, and
Leni Riefenstahl. Another point of irk: in a story taking place
over two decades, nobody ages. In fact, the great Kaori Momoi - in
her incongruously overblown performance as the owner of the
improbable geisha house - looks considerably younger as the years
go by. No budget for makeup, perhaps.
From the opening scenes of Dickensian child abuse, to Yeoh and Ziyi
putting their martial-arts expertise to use with fans, to a garden
scene misplaced from a Seurat painting, to American GIs from from
the (original) Godzilla backlot, to Gong Li channeling the Grimm
Brothers at their most nightmarish (along with the heroine from
"The Drunkard" and Joan Crawford at her nastiest), to Ziyi's Jesse
Jackson "I am somebody!" moment, to a cockamamie ending - yes,
"Geisha" disturbs.
But here's something positive: find and watch Kei Kumai's 2002 "Umi
wa miteita" (The Sea Is Watching). It's not about geishas, but
rather the residents of a 19th century seaside "pleasure district"
- Akira Kurosawa's script from Shugoro Yamamoto's novel. It tells
stories of women, from their point of view; it is real, authentic,
moving, memorable. All the characteristics missing from "Geisha."
============
Janos Gereben
www.sfcv.org
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To manage your subscription, go to
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/