Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) Review

Tennessee native Arthur Golden proved it's possible for an American to immerse himself in the ways of the geisha. But the results are not quite as memorable for Wisconsin's Rob Marshall.

Eve Harrington (Ziyi Zhang) © Columbia Pictures

Filmmaker Rob Marshall must be a fan of the classic 1950 Hollywood movie All About Eve. Because with Chicago and now Memoirs of a Geisha, he has basically twice remade it. The film arrives March 28th on DVD, with two separate Audio Commentaries: one from Marshall and co-producer John DeLuca, and another from costume designer Colleen Atwood, production designer John Myhre and editor Pietro Scalia.

Perhaps in this case it is more of a subconscious thing, as Marshall himself has alluded to in interviews, wherein he says he only realized Geisha amounted to a Far East tale of female showbiz rivalry once he got to Kyoto, Japan, to scout locations (in the end, believe it or not, most of this sumptuous looking bit of origami was shot in Thousand Oaks, a northern suburb of greater Los Angeles). Certainly, one thing people tend to forget about All About Eve is its two hours plus running time, a rarity back then rather than the rule that it is now, especially for holiday season movies.

And when you consider Marshall's own feature film career, you almost wonder what kind of devil's gambit he made behind the scenes, a la Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) in Eve. How else do you explain a guy going from a little choreography and a TV movie version of Annie to guiding 2002's Best Picture and being in the running for Oscar gold once more?

Margo Channing (Gong Li) © Columbia Pictures

Part of Marshall's own ingénue recipe has been to adapt solid gold properties from other mediums, be it Bob Fosse or Arthur Golden, who saw the film rights to his 1997 bestselling novel Memoirs of a Geisha snapped up almost immediately after publication. However, unlike Chicago, the intricately researched folds of Geisha present a world that Marshall is not so familiar with, leading to a lack of resonance and, eventually, depth.

On the surface, Marshall's lush and labyrinthine Japanese sets are a perfect duplication of the forbidden and repressed pre-World War II mores that enveloped the geisha culture. Teamed once again with production designer John Myhre and cinematographer Dion Beebee, he crafts a veritable period Disneyland, but one that is a little too shiny and a little too clean. It feels as you watch it almost like the artifice of a Broadway musical set.

Then there's the original score by John Williams. As prodigiously talented as Williams is, he tends to live in the present or future when canvassing an auditory landscape for epic-scale filmmakers. Angela's Ashes, Pearl Harbor, Geisha; of late, Williams has definitely been dabbling in new realms. But when he works period, it seems to inadvertently mute his natural, tympanic tendencies.

Addison DeWitt (Michelle Yeoh) © Columbia Pictures

It all adds up to one big problem: you never really buy into the striving authenticity of Geisha. It does indeed feel like Thousand Oaks, CA, rather than Land of a Thousand Cherry Blossoms, an issue compounded for some by the fact that the female Japanese roles of the book have been filled mostly by mainland Chinese actresses (the performer who plays a geisha named Pumpkin, Youki Kudoh, is Japanese).

Like All About Eve writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Marshall has so far on the big screen shown an uncommon intuition for matters of female emotion, turmoil and dialogue. The way he has Gong Li and Ziyi Zhang interact as rivals on screen is very much a choreographed dance; all that's missing are the musical numbers. Which brings to mind the question, would Geisha have been better as a musical rather than straight drama? Strangely, the answer is probably yes.

Then there's the overall matter of convincing cinematic catfights. Bette Davis and Anne Baxter certainly put forth a humdinger, with the inestimable Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) standing sardonically on the sidelines; and the tandem of Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones was admirably full-bodied in the throes of their Chicago conniving. But in Geisha, again, the palpable nastiness is missing from the gals' geisha power grabs.

Perhaps it's a result of actors being somewhat boxed in by having to focus so intently on the phonetics of strange, foreign dialogue (many spoke no English on set other than the dialogue rehearsed and delivered). Or maybe it's the fact that what's at stake here - auctioning off a young girl's virginity to the highest bidder - isn't quite as essential or dramatic as staring down death (Chicago) and New York drama critics (Eve).

Although there's no way in hell that anyone in this Geisha could ever convincingly deliver the line, 'Fasten your seatbelts; it's going to be a bumpy night,' it is possible to conjure up a believable mental image of Catherine Zeta-Jones's Chicago character cranking that one out. And that, in the end, is the overlying memory of this Geisha.

When, in the face of a formidable opponent, your ingénue is naïve and kind-hearted rather than conniving and vicious, as Zhang's plucky geisha gal is until the very final frames, it makes for melodrama that is far too sanitized. As a result, Marshall's All About Sayuri is a spectacularly handsome disappointment, even more so if you've read the book.

Nominated for six Oscars, Geisha sashayed its way to three: Art Direction, Cinematography and Costume Design.