I was told by many people that this is a watchable chick-flick. I think it was alright. No surprises, no unexpected ideas, just a very long, drawn out story about the life of a young girl. I saw it as the Japanese interpretation of Cinderella with a little dash of Pygmalion mixed in for flavor.
For this one I was looking for some kind of unrelated geisha picture but damn, how can you not look at that picture and sigh…
Young girl and her sister are sold to a geisha house. One sister is summarily dismissed and sent to the brothel. The sister that is accepted into the geisha house is our main character Chiyo/Sayuri. She is Chiyo until she becomes a geisha and takes a new name. I will call her Sayuri. She is hell-bent on reuniting with her sister. She tries to escape and falls from the roof, her sister has escaped without her and is gone forever. She gets news that her mother and father have died and now the women in the geisha house are her only family.
The main geisha is immediately jealous of the young newcomer and sets her up to get into trouble time after time. Another young trainee (named Pumpkin) befriends Sayuri until the main geisha takes Pumpkin under her wing and trains her to be the next great geisha, telling Pumpkin that she is now rivals with Sayuri and must treat her accordingly or else she will no longer give her the training she needs.
Sayuri has gotten into trouble enough times that the mother of the house takes her out of geisha school and makes her a slave.
One day she is standing in town being sad when a man comes along with two beautiful geisha with him. He cheers up the young Sayuri and goes along on his way. Sayuri has immediately fallen in love with him and determines to become a geisha so that she can meet back up with “The Chairman”.
She is still shunned by the women at the geisha house until another geisha from another house comes along and makes a wager with the mother of the house. She says she can train Sayuri to be a great geisha and earn her purchase price within a few months. The mother agrees and Sayuri goes with the new geisha to train. The new mentor was the greatest geisha in the province. During the training (blessedly missing a “Rocky” training montage) the mentor explains that she is training Sayuri because the mother of the house must pick a new heir. The bitch geisha is too old so Pumpkin will be picked but Pumpkin is only a puppet of the bitch geisha. Sayuri must become the new heiress.
During the training, Sauri comes into close contact with the Chairman but never gets to express her love for him. The bitch geisha is trying to ruin Sayuri’s reputation and stealing her clients. The mentor tells Sayuri to show her attentiveness for the Chairman’s deformed business partner to throw the bitch geisha off her trail. She does and the business partner begins to fall in love with her. It is repeatedly pointed out that a true geisha must sacrifice any hope of love and a relationship.
After gaining the lead and a spectacular performance in the Spring Dance, Sauyri is the next big thing. She gets a record amount of money offered for her virginity (auctioning off your virginity is reportedly a regular geisha thing in the movie although it sounds HIGHLY suspect to me…) and she has succeeded in earning more than her purchase price. The mother of the geisha house makes Sayuri the heiress. Bitch geisha taunts Sayuri about her hidden love for the Chairman, a fight ensues and bitch geisha leaves, never to be seen again.
Sayuri begins her career as the greatest geisha just as WWII breaks out. Japan is turned upside down and just at the last minute, the Chairman shows up and gets Sayuri and the mentor into different hiding villages.
Years go by and Sayuri is working manual labor to earn her keep. The chairman’s business partner shows up and says that they are trying to get their business built back up but that they need American money to do so. He asks Sayuri to help entertain and anchant the Americans with her geisha charms. She agrees and meets back up with her mentor who helps her get back into geisha form (again, without the Rocky montage) Pumpkin is also at the party and she has adopted the ways of the westerners. She smokes, drinks and talks like an American. The party goes well until the rich American financier makes a hit on Sayuri. Sayuri explains to him that no matter what he may see in the streets, a geisha is not a common whore. She tries several times to reveal to the Chairman that she was the little girl her was kind to all those years ago but she is repeatedly interrupted. When she realizes that she will never get to the Chairman because of his business partner’s adoration for her, she asks Pumpkin to bring the business partner to her room. Then she allows the American to get her into a compromising position. Pumpkin shows up with the Chairman. He walks away in shame and Pumpkin has her long-held revenge for taking the geisha house from her.
Sayuri gives up all hope and returns to the city trying to re-build the geisha life that has been destroyed by the prostitutes posing as geisha. The Chairman finds her and confronts her. He tells her that he always knew that she was the same little girl and that he sent the famous geisha mentor to her. Now that his business partner has no interest in Sayuri he can finally express he love for her. They kiss, the end.
It was beautiful and obviously filmed in spectacular fashion. Every scene gave you the feel before anyone spoke a line. A technological success. But, it had zero depth. It was boring. Cinderella falls in love and is transformed into the belle of the ball by Henry Higgins. She has troubles along the way but eventually gets her man in the end. In the beginning there was all this talk about her strength of “water” and how she would find a new path to reach her destiny. She never really portrayed those qualities, the paths found her. That doesn’t make it a bad plot, it just means that the character learned almost nothing. “I want it, I can’t have it, fate provided it to me”. No depth.
There was a lot of talk about the casting and “How dare they cast a Chinese girl in a geisha role”. I’ll be honest, being a casual fan of ancient Japanese history, I thought the same thing until I started talking with some people about the “Asian look” and how most people (including many Asians) can’t tell the difference either. Test yourself here. So the inter-Asian casting aside I thought they did a good job. Michelle Yeoh is strong and solid as always. Zhang Ziyi was gorgeous, more so than she was as Moon in “Hero”. The only Japanese lead, Ken Watanabe, is barely noticeable. For all his involvement I doubt he was on screen for more than ten minutes in this two and a half hour yawn fest.
I think it could have been saved by a colder ending. After Sayuri has given up her love for him and embraced the sacrifices a geisha must make, the Chairman shows up and Sayuri tells him it is too late and that she has moved on. It would have felt more real to me, it would have shown me that Sayuri is a dynamic character, not just a doll that we dress up in new clothes throughout the movie. But instead we get the Disney ending. They kiss and they live happily ever after.
Ok, maybe they do but what about the bitch geisha? It would have been nice to catch up with her and see her strung out on heroin and being gang-banged by twenty American GIs. And what about little sister? When she said she never saw her sister again, she fucking meant it! Why have her in the story at all? Don’t give me all that crap about “It’s based on a true story” because I already read all about how the author rolled over so many details and stole the rest to the point that the true life geisha sued him. If it’s not a strict autobiography, then we didn’t need to introduce the sister. If we are going to have happy endings, the sister plot line should have been closed out with Sayuri receiving a letter from her sister telling her she escaped to Canada and owns a bakery or something.
It was beautiful and boring. I didn’t dislike it but I really would have been happy to have never seen it. On the other hand it was exactly what I was told it would be. Teresa liked it a little more than I did so this was indeed; a watchable chick-flick.
5 of 11 Skulls
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