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Distributor:
Roadshow Home Entertainment
Region 4 | Pal Format
Available to rent
Director: Rob Marshall
Certificate: M
Extras: Yes
ANYONE
IN IT WE KNOW?
Ziyi
Zhang, Ken Watanabe, Michelle Yeoh, Youki Kudoh, Koji Yakusho, Li Gong,
Karl Yune, Ted Levine
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WHAT’S
IT ABOUT THEN?
Originally
to have been directed by Steven
Spielberg, this big screen
adaptation of the bestselling
novel of the same name is so
sprawling in its period
complexity, and takes place in
such an unusual setting for a
Hollywood film, that an
experienced hand on the tiller
was always going to be
necessary. Taking a story set in
pre-war Japan, with an almost
exclusively Japanese and Chinese
cast, would have been a
challenge even for the current
master of American cinema.
Instead,
the director’s chair
eventually went to Rob Marshall
who, though Oscar-nominated for
his first film, 2002’s
Chicago, has hardly shown any
indication of special talent.
Considering Chicago’s origins
on the stage, and the screen
adaptation’s largely
stage-like, fairly unimaginative
approach to making the jump to a
different medium, the thought of
giving such an inexperienced
director such an epic and
expensive project for his second
feature must have been a major
worry – especially with a lead
actress taking on her first
major English language role.
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It
does seem rather an odd choice
to get a Chinese actress to play
a Japanese geisha – a trained
courtesan entertainer, and far,
far superior to the high-class
prostitutes for which they are
often mistaken in the west, as
sex rarely plays a part in their
entertainments. It seems
especially odd in an
English-language film.
But
such has been the rise of Zhang
Ziyi since she first attracted
international attention in
2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon and then again in Hero
and House of Flying Daggers,
that she is now the first choice
of any major studio looking for
an attractive young
‘oriental’ female lead. In
support, as the aging geisha
mistress and trainer, the first
choice ‘attractive older
oriental actress’ that is
Michelle Yeoh has also been
brought back to reunite with her
Crouching Tiger co-star.
Yeoh’s
extensive English-language work
and past partnership with Zhang
might, you may think, have
enabled her to act as a very
useful go-between for director
and his lead actress. The only
trouble is that Yeoh’s mother
tongue is Cantonese, Zhang’s
Mandarin.
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In
other words, they certainly
didn’t make it easy for
themselves with this film. Chuck
in the difficulty of adapting a
novel narrated in the first
person for the screen and making
a book which worked as much for
its attempts to unravel pre-war
Japanese culture as to create
the kind of absorbingly
fast-moving plot which most
cinemagoers now seem to demand,
it just gets even more of a
challenge.
With
a more experienced director and
a better script, they might just
have been able to pull it off.
The actors all do their best in
the face of a suspect script and
all the language difficulties,
with supporting cast members,
Chinese megastar Gong Li, and
masterly Japanese actor Ken
Watanabe on particularly fine
form, but they can’t quite
overcome the melodramatic,
soap-opera feel that seems to
have been the outcome of
condensing the novel to fit a
running time of less than
two-and-a-half hours.
In
the end, all that is really left
is a beautiful and
expensive-looking but strangely
emotionless entity, which
promises much yet fails to fully
deliver. Much like a geisha,
really.
ANY
SPECIAL FEATURES?
-
Director's
Audio Commentary with Rob
Marshall and John DeLuca
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Technical
Audio COmmentary with
Colleen Atwood (Costumes),
John Myhre (Production
Designer) and Pietro Scalla
(Editor)
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Geisha
Boot camp - A behind the
scenes look at how the
actresses learned the art of
becoming geisha
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Building
the Hanamachi - Recreating
the entire village of old
Kyoto in a pasture in
Southern California
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The
Look of a Geisha - The most
famous Geisha were
considered to be the
supermodels of their time,
learn the ancient secrets
and modern twists to
creating their hair, makeup
and wardrobe for the film
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The
Music of "Memoirs"
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Behind
the Scenes Photo Gallery
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Costume
Illustrations Gallery
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