Every now and again, we come across a novel that speaks to our heart. It could be the story, or the writing, or, more than likely, both. Sometimes it’s because we happen to be reading it while something extraordinary’s happening in our lives. In my case, I was falling in love, across thousands of miles, carrying on a long-distance courtship with this guy I barely knew, a courtship fraught with phone calls and e-mails and heart-wrenching farewells at the airport. And I was reading Memoirs of a Geisha.

The fact remains that Memoirs is a poignant story beautifully told, though in all honesty, my raging hormones at the time could have enhanced its appeal: I found the agonizingly frustrating courtship between the two main characters intensely moving. Even to this day, I cannot read certain passages without getting a lump in my throat. When the movie came out, I refused to watch it, unwilling to allow the possibility of a bad adaptation to tarnish my memory of the real thing. And the bad reviews didn’t help. But somehow, the barriers finally came down, and the guy I barely knew a handful of years ago sat down with me to give this movie adaptation a chance.

And am I glad we did. I’m happy to report that the bad press was vastly exaggerated, and though there are some minor deviations from the original, they did little to prevent me from enjoying the movie. The heart of the story remained intact and, in fact, was brought to the fore, distilled from a 400+ page novel into a 2+ hour film. Critics complained that the movie is a Western take on an Eastern culture, but then, so was the novel, inasmuch as the author, Arthur Golden, is American. But he is also a scholar of Japanese history and has done copious research into the times and lives of geishas, and was able to impart authenticity to a fascinating period and culture.

When her mother dies, 9-year-old Chiyo is sold by her poor family into an okiya, a geisha house. She is separated from her elder sister Satsu who is sold into prostitution. Chiyo is unsuccessful in her attempt to run away with her sister, and runs afoul of Hatsumomo, the geisha on whose earnings the okiya depends. Hatsumomo sees the young girl as a potential rival and, like the tigress that she is, tears into Chiyo as much as she can, making the little girl’s life a living hell. But a chance encounter with The Chairman, who treats her kindly, makes Chiyo determined to become a geisha so she can become part of his world.

A celebrated geisha, Mameha, takes the apprentice Chiyo under her wing, and not only trains her but, with astute manoeuvrings, transforms Chiyo into Sayuri, a full-scale geisha with men bidding furiously for her mizuage (virginity). The price offered for Sayuri’s mizuage is such that Mother, the owner of the okiya, considers adopting her instead of her friend Pumpkin, another apprentice geisha under Hatsumomo’s wings. This pits the women against each other, even unto the tea-houses where they entertain men with their skills at dancing and conversation.

Upon meeting The Chairman again, Sayuri is forced to court his friend Nobu instead. But soon WWII intervenes and Japan is torn apart, and a geisha’s life becomes meaningless. Will they even survive the hardships of war?

Hollywood being Hollywood, an entirely Japanese cast and crew was not considered marketable and subtitles were not entertained. This left us with big-name Chinese actresses playing Japanese characters and lisping their lines in English. Not a very satisfactory state of affairs, one would be forgiven for thinking, and yet one would be very, very wrong. Even though no fewer than three of the main characters are of Chinese origin: Ziyi Zhang (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) as Chuyi/Sayuri, Gong Li (Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern, Curse of the Golden Flower) as Hatsumomo, and Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Tomorrow Never Dies) as Mameha, all three acquitted themselves more than adequately. If anything, Ziyi Zhang and Gong Li’s difficulty with English placed them squarely on a par with the Japanese actors. Ironically, it was Michelle Yeoh’s facility with English that put her at a disadvantage, for she sounded out of place among all the other accented speakers.

The other big parts are all assigned to Japanese actors and they’re all perfectly cast and pitch-perfect in their parts. Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai) as the noble Chairman, Koji Yakusho as the scarred Nobu, Youki Kudoh (Snow Falling on Cedars) as the lovable Pumpkin, and Kaori Momoi as the gritty, irascible, abacus-flicking Mother, all turn in solid, indeed, stellar performances.

While Zhiyi Zhang is certainly well-chosen for the part of Chiyo/Sayuri—she exudes that potent mix of innocence and intelligence, and they even found a child actor, Suzuka Ohgo, who resembles her to play the young Chiyo, Gong Li is perhaps even more perfectly cast as the ferocious tigress Hatsumomo, hissing her words up close in her rivals’ faces and tossing her undressed locks over her shoulder with just that mix of scorn and devil-take-you arrogance.

Dion Beebe’s cinematography is stunning and mood-appropriate, from the dark Dickensian tones at the very beginning when the children are taken from a life of abject poverty, to the sumptuously recreated sets, and the sheer beauty of that most Japanese of aesthetics—cherry blossoms in full bloom at Spring Festival when lovers court (albeit with much decorous reserve).

Needless to say, the costumes are dazzling (kimonos are notoriously expensive, and no doubt no expenses were spared), though not nearly as much time is spent on them in the movie as in the book. Golden’s novel was meticulously detailed in its background and setting, and while much is necessarily lost in the blink of an eye of screen-time, Chiyo/Sayuri’s spirit is not. Like the water that she has ‘too much of’, she flows around adversity and slowly wears away the obstacles in her path. Like water, her course is altered many times, but her strength is as water’s—her ability to change with her circumstances while remaining true to herself.

All said and done, the movie does lack the poetry of Golden’s prose, so anyone taken with the movie would do well to read the novel. Four stars for the movie adapted from a five-star novel.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older