Memoirs Of A Geisha (DVD)

'Memoirs of a Geisha' is an amazing novel, and having heard it was going to be made into a film starring Zhang Ziyi and Gong Li (one of my favourite actresses) I was very excited. What I found was a very stylish, beautifully shot costume drama that ultimately didn't have a lot to show for itself.

The novel has a brilliant story and wonderful characters, but in this film the whole story was rushed and condensed, big parts of the novel were missing, and generally the way it was filmed seemed more focused on beautiful imagery and fancy direction rather than intimate storytelling. As a result, it didn't create anything like the drama of the book and I just felt that it was all style and no substance.

In terms of acting, I feel that the film would have been better if they'd had Japanese actresses speaking their own language, or possibly Asian actresses who at least had a good grasp of English. It's not a great thing to say, but the fact is with acting you need to be able to use language effectively, and none of the actors in this film could do that. Their speech was slow, stunted and often mispronounced or misinterpreted words. I'm sure they're good actresses, but just the difficulty with which they spoke the language came across heavily on screen and I felt this crippled the drama somewhat.

That said, I feel that 'Memoirs of a Geisha' is a very mediocre film. If you haven't read the book, than you may like it, if so then you're going to be seriously disappointed. This is an artistic, elaborate showcase of a film, it's not about people, the story is just a very mellow version of the book and the characters are butchered by actresses who can barely communicate coherently. It's all about pretty costumes and make-up and I left the cinema feeling very disappointed.