Memoirs of a Geisha

First and foremost you should understand that Memoirs of a Geisha is one of my favorite books and when I got it I read it 3 times almost back to back. So I had highly anticipated the arrival of the movie. Maybe I had a lot of expectations, and my disappointment was a result of that. But I don't think so. I think that the movie industry has become a money grubbing machine of crap that just spews and spews endless excrement. I think they saw an intimate "memoir", fueled with imagery that was vivid enough to be seen even without a screen. What they didn't seem to see, however, is the most important thing of all: the methodical, purposeful use of every word and every moment. You can't take a book in which everything has meaning, and condense it into nothingness. You can't, but they did. Let's begin.

A brief history of the book for those of you who haven't partaken (by the way: READ IT!): Memoirs is the story of a young girl, Chiyo, from a small fishing village whose father sells her and her sister into the slave like Geisha life. She is sold to an 'okiya' where she is schooled for years on how to sing, dance, and play the shamisan, as well as speak, dress, apply makeup, put on the very elaborate kimono and obi, and to beguile the gentlemen they will entertain. (Don't get this wrong: geisha are not prostitutes. They are like escorts, they are to be looked at and watched, and they talk and entertain. If a geisha is adored enough by a particular man, he will become her 'danna', and she will be for him alone and he will pay all her expenses and will keep her well. Its a complicated tale. She is a slave to the okiya, and owes them all her expenses, to be paid back when she works as a geisha. She will owe them her costs for her schooling, food, even the cost of what they paid for her. ) Chiyo's okiya is home to Hatsumomo, her antagonist, an evil, jealous woman who does all in her power to bring poor Chiyo down. And Pumpkin (a nickname) a little girl of the same age who came a few months before Chiyo who will also train to be geisha.
She meets the Chairman, falls in love with him and spends the rest of her time trying to be a geisha that he will fall in love with. Chiyo is 'adopted' for training by Mameha, a renown geisha and Hatsumomo's arch nemesis. Mameha decides the Chairman won't work for Chiyo (whose name becomes Sayuri when she becomes geisha) and decides her future relies on Nobu, a gruff man who was debilitated in the war and has only 1 arm and horrible burns all over his face.
That's as much as you need to know. Now lets rip this bag of crap apart.

They hollowed out all of the characters so badly you don't care about a single one of them. In the name of expediency they took carefully cultivated relationships and subtle nuances of character, and cut gaping caverns in them that are so wide they are impossible for the viewer to cross. The Chairman becomes less of a mysterious character that alludes her throughout and becomes just another Hollywood love interest. Her relationship with Nobu, a delicate but powerful relationship with astounding complications, becomes another nuisance on her road to the Hollywood ending. An ending, might I add, that they also change for the movie. Hatsumomo was supposed to be a villainess for the ages. Like a samurai sword, a work of art indeed but dangerous and cold. In the movie, she is a disheveled slag. Psychotic and reckless. And Pumpkin becomes just another sub-plot.

My biggest problem with this movie, is that they took the term "based on the book" and stretched it to the nth degree. Based on the book? Bitch, please. They added things that never happened in the book, but not little things, huge things! Like Hatsumomo burning down the okiya. Never happened. They took out major dialog of such importance to the storyline that my husband, who has never read the book, spent half the movie scratching his head and saying "What's going on?" My answer: "Hell if I know." They hacked apart major plot points and character relationships so badly they were unrecognizable, and consequently made poetic dialog seem like over dramatized tripe. It all ended up with the feel of being man-handled. Awkward at best.

The only thing this film had going for it was the same reason it won an Oscar for cinematography; its absolutely stunning. Frame for frame it is a work of art. Flawless color, lighting and movement. But what do you get when you take something that should be slow and deliberate and intelligent, and simply give it a pretty face?

Like Paris Hilton's head. Beautiful and empty.

Memoirs of a Geisha gets Joon's worst movie rating: You sons-of-bitches. I wish I had a time machine simply to stop this movie from ever being made. Ever.