Marshall’s ‘Geisha’ more Hollywood than Japan

In theaters

MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, directed by Rob Marshall, written by Robin Swicord, based on the book by Arthur Golden, 137 minutes, rated PG-13.

On one level, the new Rob Marshall movie, “Memoirs of a Geisha,” isn’t so far removed from his Academy Award-winning 2002 film, “Chicago.” Each is extravagantly produced, each is beautiful to look at, each features story lines that court their share of drama. And yet there is a crucial difference that Marshall either overlooked or ignored on his way to directing his sophomoric effort.

“Chicago” is intended to be a spectacle. It’s meant to be robustly American. Marshall’s overblown sensibility not only suited the movie, it would have died without it. The film worked because of the high camp it courted, the melodrama it served so well, the razzle-dazzle that winked and blinked from every corner of the screen.

Watching “Geisha,” a rather different story about Japanese girls sold on the open market, enslaved for work and sex, and then humiliated when their virginity is sold to the highest bidder (provided there is one), you have to wonder how a similar sensibility works for this movie. The quick answer depends on what brings you to it.

If you’re only interested in the pretty painted faces and the intricate kimonos, or the tense intrigue, savage game play and tug of romance you might find in a novel by, say, Jackie Collins by way of James Clavell, then the style suits this blockbuster hopeful well.

But if you know something about the geisha, whose illusion of serene beauty belied a difficult life beyond which most could comprehend, one could argue that a more restrained approach would have been more effective, with the melodramatic moments pared to a minimum in favor of allowing room for depth and subtlety.

As written by Robin Swicord from Arthur Golden’s best-selling book, “Memoirs of a Geisha” could have been terrific if it didn’t feel as if it were serving a sizable budget.

Taken for what it is – soap opera, nothing more – it can be entertaining, particularly after the awkward first third, in which Marshall overplays every emotion to the point of laying it bare onscreen. What he doesn’t seem to appreciate is that his story is set in the East, whose people handle emotions a bit differently than we in the West. Still, since his movie is designed for Westerners, who demand an onslaught of emotion from a film like this, the clanging of cultures can nevertheless be oddly fun, regardless of whether that was Marshall’s intent.

For instance, when the main character, a geisha-in-training named Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang), finally rises up against her hateful nemesis geisha Hatsumomo (Gong Li) – a teahouse tramp who has been trying to undo Sayuri for years, ever since she was a child dropped at the okiya – the hair pulling, slapping, shrieking and shoving that ensues zips with energy.

Grounding the movie is Sayuri’s geisha trainer, Mameha, who is played with reserve and grace by the Chinese actress Michelle Yeoh (Zhang and Li also are Chinese, which has created something of a controversy). Even when she must talk to Sayuri in sexual metaphors about eels finding their way into caves, she does it with tact, gleaning over the dialogue without a trace of humor.

“We don’t become a geisha to pursue our own destinies,” Mameha says. “We become geisha because we have no choice. Agony and beauty for us live side by side. Geisha paints her face to hide her face. It is not for geisha to want. It is not for geisha to feel. Geisha is an artist of the floating world. She dances, she sings, she entertains you – whatever you want. The rest is shadows. The rest is secret.”

Well, not quite secret – at least not in this movie, where every secret is revealed.

Sending the film over the moon is Mother (Kaori Momoi), who bought Sayuri from her destitute parents when Sayuri was still a child named Chiyo, and who can do things with a pipe that border on the obscene. There’s Pumpkin (Zoe Weizenbaum in youth, Youki Kudoh as an adult), Sayuri’s one-time friend, who becomes so colorful as she ages, she could decorate a Blue Hawaii better than any old paper umbrella.

For pining Sayuri, her love interest is Chairman (Ken Watanabe), who was kind to her as a child and who has had her heart ever since. The question to which “Geisha” builds is whether Sayuri will somehow find a way to be with Chairman. Will her childhood crush be realized, perhaps even consummated? As the movie blasts into the throes of World War II, Sayuri is separated from the Chairman and then brought back to him by circumstance. Filled with self-doubt, covered with dirt and nearly ruined by war, she realizes that she must become a geisha again if she is to see him.

“Mother had reopened the okiya,” she says, “but my powder box was empty, my charcoal had turned to dust. And yet it was my one chance to see the Chairman again. Would he notice my weathered hands, the threadbare silk? The world had changed completely – had he? And would I finally find the strength to tell him all I felt?”

In this commercial movie, where the seams show and the plot becomes threadbare in spite of the Academy Award-worthy costume design, that question is beside the point. It doesn’t exactly take some tossed tea leaves to figure out how it will end.

Grade: C+

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays in Discovering, Fridays in Happening, and Weekends in Television. He may be reached at christopher@week

inrewind.com.