Geishas Don't Prostitute Themselves; Sony Pictures Does

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: December 8, 2005 10:51:32 AM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Geishas Don't Prostitute Themselves; Sony  
Pictures Does
Reply-To: dewayne () warpspeed com

[Note  A film review from friend Janos Gereben.  DLH]

> From: "JanosG" <janosg () sbcglobal net>
> 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>



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