Having read the book by Arthur Golden before watching this movie, I have to admit it left me with somewhat of an empty stomach in the end. Golden's novel has a dual intent: teaching, by explaining every step a girl goes through before she becomes a geisha and entertaining, by adding a love-story plot with a nice romantic happy ending.
To my personal disappointment, the movie mostly emphasizes on that second part. Many of the interesting details of the process to becoming a geisha have been left out. I am thinking of moments at the geisha school, the details about kimonos and hair, the importance of the debt a geisha has towards the Okiya, etc.
Some adjustments were also made to adapt it to the big screen, like e.g. the Nobu character, whom in the book has only one arm and is disfigured all over his body. In the movie only his face shows some discolored spots. Even the diary that Chiyo keeps about her hidden love (the president) and the other people from the Okiya, which was in fact the true reason for the fight with Hatsumomo, was left out. And the fact that in the movie it is the president that saves Sayuri from the war (and not Nobu like in the novel) also made me raise my eyebrows.
But I suppose turning over 450 pages into a 2 hour movie and still keep a large audience entertained isn't an easy task to accomplish. Memoirs of a Geisha is most certainly not a bad movie, on the contrary. The acting is very strong and the casting tremendous (although most actresses are Chinese and not Japanese). This movie asked for beautiful woman, and with Ziyi Zhang as Chiyo/Sayuri and Li Gong as Hatsumomo (who from my eyes looked even more beautiful than her adversary) this was more than accomplished. The images really take you back to the Gion of the 40's. They give you a true feeling of what was going on at the time and how it all changed because of the war.
So I could conclude in saying that this is a movie you have to see if you are interested in a nice but strong oriental love story. If however you want to learn about geisha's, then I would advice you to read the Arthur Golden novel, which contains much more details. But it was a very enjoyable movie nonetheless.
To my personal disappointment, the movie mostly emphasizes on that second part. Many of the interesting details of the process to becoming a geisha have been left out. I am thinking of moments at the geisha school, the details about kimonos and hair, the importance of the debt a geisha has towards the Okiya, etc.
Some adjustments were also made to adapt it to the big screen, like e.g. the Nobu character, whom in the book has only one arm and is disfigured all over his body. In the movie only his face shows some discolored spots. Even the diary that Chiyo keeps about her hidden love (the president) and the other people from the Okiya, which was in fact the true reason for the fight with Hatsumomo, was left out. And the fact that in the movie it is the president that saves Sayuri from the war (and not Nobu like in the novel) also made me raise my eyebrows.
But I suppose turning over 450 pages into a 2 hour movie and still keep a large audience entertained isn't an easy task to accomplish. Memoirs of a Geisha is most certainly not a bad movie, on the contrary. The acting is very strong and the casting tremendous (although most actresses are Chinese and not Japanese). This movie asked for beautiful woman, and with Ziyi Zhang as Chiyo/Sayuri and Li Gong as Hatsumomo (who from my eyes looked even more beautiful than her adversary) this was more than accomplished. The images really take you back to the Gion of the 40's. They give you a true feeling of what was going on at the time and how it all changed because of the war.
So I could conclude in saying that this is a movie you have to see if you are interested in a nice but strong oriental love story. If however you want to learn about geisha's, then I would advice you to read the Arthur Golden novel, which contains much more details. But it was a very enjoyable movie nonetheless.
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