SummarySet in a mysterious and exotic world which still casts a potent spell today, the story begins in the years before World War II, when a Japanese child is torn from her penniless family to work as a servant in a geisha house. Despite a treacherous rival who nearly breaks her spirit, the girl blossoms into the legendary geisha Saguri. Beaut...
SummarySet in a mysterious and exotic world which still casts a potent spell today, the story begins in the years before World War II, when a Japanese child is torn from her penniless family to work as a servant in a geisha house. Despite a treacherous rival who nearly breaks her spirit, the girl blossoms into the legendary geisha Saguri. Beaut...
There's no doubting that Memoirs of a Geisha is a lush motion picture, and it has much to recommend it, but this will not go down as one of the great screen romances of the 2000s.
Two Of my favourite movies came out during this year the other one being Children of men, this movie delights my heart each time I watch It. I've watched It at least 20 times and bought the book to read the novel. All though I confess the first time I watched It I didn't get it but that was in 2010 since then It's become one of my favourites.
Io amo in modo particolare questo film.
E' grazie a questo film visto e rivisto dozzine di volte che mi ha fatto innamorare del Giappone.
Ken Watanabe bravissimo come sempre
Michelle Yeoh straordinaria ma,
Gong Li e Zhang Ziyi sono le miei preferite talento e bellezza impressionanti,
3 oscar strameritati anche se meritava di più
I object to the movie not on sociological grounds but because I suspect a real geisha house floated on currents deeper and more subtle than the broad melodrama on display here.
The film comes to life whenever the cartoonishly vindictive Gong throws a tantrum, but she played virtually the same role in Zhang Yimou's "Shanghai Triad," which presented a far more compelling rationale for her star fits. Without her, this expensive piece of backlot pageantry turns vivid history into an ossified tchotchke.
Colleen Atwood's costumes are the best a film adaptation of a popular book can buy. They rustle like nobody's business. The film itself is equal parts silk and polyester.
Oh, what awful voices -- clumsy words as well as cheesy accents -- come out of the actors' mouths! Though I wanted to appreciate the human story, and the lavish spectacle, I couldn't get past the clangorous echoes of Charlie Chan.
To its credit, the film's costume design is stunning. But unless you have a kimono fetish, there's no reason to pay a good dollar (or a yen, for that matter) on this junk.
This movie is a dive into the world of Japanese Geishas. Its a misunderstood profession, full of mysteries even today. However, the film makes everything wonderfully enjoyable, emotional, so intense and engaging that I almost didn't feel the two and a half hours the movie takes. The story begins when young Chyio is sold by her parents to a geisha house. At once, it shows the drama of the separation, and we almost feel the child's excruciating pain in the incessant search for her sister, who quickly becomes the last family she feels she has. Then it will end, as Chyio takes his only remaining path of life: the life in the geisha house, learning their profession by initiative of a mature geisha, who takes her as an apprentice. Other strong themes of the plot are the envy, rivalry between geishas and the difficulty they have to keep a romantic life since they're expected to be single and not behave like prostitutes. In any case, the plot captivates our attention and Chyio, later Sayuri, becomes a character the audience is able to empathize with.
Despite having a good Eastern cast, mostly female, the highlight goes to Ken Watanabe, Ziyi Zhang, Suzuka Ohgo and Li Gong. Watanabe is virtually the only sounding name for western audiences, as he has a solid career in Hollywood, but the three female actresses I mentioned have brightened more than he did, as their characters have more presence and prominence than his Administrator. Li Gong is truly hateful as a villain, while the two actresses are the children's/adult version of Chyio/Sayuri. Cinematography, costumes, make-up and art direction are also brilliant and deserves to be congratulated. The film is visually magnificent, and the audience truly understands the effort made to make it realistic and believable. Mistakes or problems? In my opinion, perhaps just the difficult of reconciling English dialogue with specific Japanese terms. If they're terms without strict translation to English this is perfectly understandable. Anyway, since I watched the film with subtitles for European Portuguese, this linguistic issue didn't represent a problem for me, although I admit that English-speaking audiences may feel some difficulty with Japanese terms they don't know.
Simply from a visual standpoint, it is a masterpiece. While some thought it was boring and not engaging, I thought everything went smoothly. The melodramatic performances are what made it better in my opinion, and the story is interesting.
Beautiful costumes, beautiful sets, beautiful cinematography; truly a gorgeous movie. That being said, it wasn't enough to carry me through two and half hours of a screenplay and characters worthy of a bad romance novel.
Beautifully shot, wonderful art and set direction, great costumes, and fairly great performances by the actors--all of these elements, however, do not makeup for a half-finished script that needs some minor but effective changes. Everything setup in the first two thirds of the film were interesting, but really did not add up to the rushed 3rd act of the film (everything during and after WWII). There's this gradual tension building and building throughout the first half of the film between Chiyo and Hatsumomo that is never really fully explored, explained, or resolved. It's a crying shame because Hatsumomo is setup to be a great antagonist, constantly presenting friction against the pure-hearted and trusting, though naive, Chiyo. The sexual tension between Chairman and Chiyo feels alright, but only because of the actors who worked so hard to build their on-screen chemistry. How it's actually conducted throughout the film feels a bit forced, unrealistic, and has an unsatisfying but positive resolution. Chairman is someone that Chiyo has projected all of her unfulfilled desires to be loved and happy onto. Yes, he is kind, but it absolutely feels more like a childhood crush that never got a reality check than a romance that is truly worth fighting and cheering for. Truly, he was only ever kind to Chiyo once in her life--and the movie says "Yes, that's enough for her to be completely in love with him." Give me a break. The rules of this film are far too fantastical to even be relatable. The tone seems insecure, in that the people who made this film could not decide if they wanted to make a fairy tale love story set to the backdrop of pre- and post-WWII Japan, or a hard-hitting historical fiction.
Production Company
Columbia Pictures,
Dreamworks Pictures,
Spyglass Entertainment,
Amblin Entertainment,
Red Wagon Entertainment,
United Performers' Studio,
Miramax