My Favorite Films of 2005

Not counting all the films I saw at the Locarno Film Festival, I saw 80 new releases this year – out of the top 250 films that will gross a million or more domestically. If you check the weekly VARIETY for the third week of January, you can see the entire list of highest grossing films.

 

Here’s my "Sweet Sixteen" list of favorites in alphabetical order; they are all reviewed in this blog:

 

Batman Begins

Capote

Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’

Constant Gardener

Crash

Good Night and Good Luck

History of Violence

Innocent Voices

King Kong

La Neuvaine (tba)                                                             

Mad Hot Ballroom

March of the Penguins

Millions

Munich

Syriana

Walk the Line

The Family Stone

It’s Christmas and Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) goes home with her boyfriend Everett (Dermot Mulroney) for the holidays to meet his family, the Stones.

 

Meredith seems as tightly wound, like her knob of hair at the back of her head. She looks cold, and younger sister Amy (Rachel McAdams) baits her continually, trying to make the ice queen crack. Even Everett seems to have taken on some of Meredith’s temperament. His brother Ben (Luke Wilson) arrives  and is polar opposites of his brother, that is, he is extremely casual; especially the way he dresses. Brother Thad (Tyrone Giordano), who is hearing impaired, arrives with his partner, Patrick (Brian J. White). Mom (Diane Keaton) and Dad (Craig T. Nelson) welcome another daughter, who is expecting, and her little girl, Elizabeth (Savannah Stehlin).

 

Meredith gets off on the wrong foot by refusing to share Everett’s room and this means Amy has to sleep on the couch. Mom is no slouch, and she thinks Meredith’s a hypocrite (in so many words). Everyone realizes that Everett is making a mistake so when he asks his mom for the family ring so he can propose on Christmas, she refuses.

 

Meanwhile, Meredith makes her own family’s Christmas morning breakfast special, wanting to do something for her hosts. But she feels out-of-place and calls her sister Julie (Claire Danes) to come (from Bedford; a nod to It’s a Wonderful Life?) and stay with her for moral support; she moves out of the house to the Inn.. When Julie arrives, Everett is kind of surprised; meanwhile Ben seems to have Meredith figured out. And what about Amy?

 

At dinner on Christmas Eve Thad and Patrick start talking about the baby they want to adopt and the uptight, prudish Meredith, asks: “But is it nature or nurture? I mean do you want to raise a child with gay parents, it’s already hard enough…” Mom tries to explain that the family has always thought that people are born the way they are born and so forth. Meredith could have stopped this inappropriate line of conversation at any moment, but she keeps going until Dad tells her to stop. What was a bad situation becomes even worse.

 

The next morning, (that night has a lot of the story in it), when gifts are shared, Meredith surprises all of them with the mother & child gift she has brought for each of the Stones; only they realize the ultra significance of it at first

 

The Family Stone is not a comedy though it has its moments. It is a very touching family story, where babies are born, love blossoms, and people die, and life goes on, to the next Christmas, when the family will gather again to celebrate their gift to one another.

 

I went to see the film with my younger sister. I was cringing through the whole table conversation part of the film, but my sister said she thought Meredith asked the kinds of questions about homosexuality that people think anyway. I said, “But she should have stopped! Anyone could see that she was digging a very deep hole and being offensive (a guest, people she didn’t even know, etc.). But my sister replied, “All of us get in situations where we should have shut up and didn’t; I kind of understood her.”

 

You will have to see for yourself if the film has a main character or a main theme as a character. I thought Diane Keaton was wonderful, and I always like Luke Wilson (seems to play the same basic kind of guy in all his films, but it works.) They keep mentioning the town of "Bedford” to the extent that you think the filmmaker must be trying to tell you something.

 

The Family Stone is a conventional film at times (I hate it when you can guess the dialogue) and unconventional at other times. It’s a film about family, dysfunction, fitting in, acceptance, the fact that nobody’s perfect and that family is all we’ve got, like them or not. 

 

I liked them a lot.

 

(Some might think this is a film with a politically correct agenda; the gay hearing-impaired son, adopting a baby with his partner, who is, by the way, African-American; Meredith who sleeps with her boyfriend won't do so in his parent's home, and Meredith's ill-timed interrogation of two dads raising a child - and which race will it be? There are many ethical and moral themes in the film that people may want to talk about, that are good to talk about. Perhaps the parents' seemingly easy acquiescence to their children's lifestyles most of all. Yet, what are parents to do with the choices their children make; what is God to do with the choices we make? Parents teach and love their children as God does us; then God leaves us free but God never stops loving us. 

 

After Meredith's fiasco at the dinner table, all I could think of was what Pope John XXIII said about religious controversy in 1959 when he announced the Second Vatican Council:

 

"in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity."

 

Maybe the Stone's had some distance to go about the essentials of God's will for us, but for them, charity reigned. Moral relativism is easy; charity is not. What's it to be?

 

(Other members of my family have now seen this film and they think the Stone's were terrible and very uncharitable; they disagree with my take very strongly. I stick to my review, however, because in the end "family is all we have" - and I think they were tolerant; they were facing a huge challenge that only a few of the family knew about... I do think Meredith had a lot of heart, and so did the "stones".)

 

Rumor Has It

(Semi-spoiler but if you go see the movie and don’t read this first, you’ll have only yourself to blame.)

 

Sarah (Jennifer Anniston) is on her way to Pasadena with boyfriend Jeff ( Mark Ruffalo) for her sister Annie’s (Mena Suvari) wedding. Sarah and Jeff are engaged but Sarah tells Jeff she isn’t wearing her ring because she wants to wait to announce their wedding.

 

Dad Earl (Richard Jenkins) meets them at the airport and proceeds to Pasaden-ize Jeff.

Sarah is kind of identity neurotic; she doesn’t fit in with her family; she’s nervous about marrying Jeff. Over the weekend she finds out from her mother’s mother Katharine (“I told you not to call me Grandma!” Shirely MacLaine) that her own now deceased mom took off a week before her wedding; she went to Cabo and had a fling with Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner). It suddenly occurs to Sarah that her family story sounds a lot like that of The Graduate. She proceeds to investigate so she can discover who she is. And of course it involves sleeping with you-know-who.

 

That’s the movie in a nut shell, which is where it belongs.

 

I know there are a lot of Jennifer Anniston fans out there, but someone really has to get her a script that doesn’t look like a charity handout.

 

This film had three things going for it: close-ups of Jennifer’s face and hair; Shirley MacLaine (all four funny lines are hers and they were all in the trailers; will we never learn?) and Richard Jenkins who played the father with dignity; Earl was a great choice of name for him.

 

Here’s what the writers (shame on them) should have done: made this Shirley MacLaine’s movie. She’s a really funny lady. Can you imagine going back and seeing this story through Mrs. Robinson's POV?

 

Snore.

Munich

It’s been a week since I saw Munich and I am still in mourning.

 

I have tried not to give away too much here, but it is not possible to only outline a film like this. It made my list of top films for 2005. 

 

Munich is the story of the systematic revenge killings for the 1972 assassinations of the Israeli Olympic team in Munich, Germany. The Israeli government commissioned the secret killings of eleven of the Palestinians who planned the assassinations. The Israeli’s rationalized them by the necessity that civilizations sometimes need “to negotiate the compromise of their values” - as the film has Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) declares in a quiet tone, steeled with resolve. 

 

Munich opens with the blow by blow account of what began that early morning at the Olympic Village; it is terrible and violent. 

 

The Mossad, the Israeli Intelligence service, recruits one of its own, Avner (Eric Bana); his handler is Ephraim (Goeffrey Rush) who sets up the bank accounts among other things. Avner must sign a paper that he is not employed by the Mossad so that if the plan goes awry, nothing can be traced back to the Israeli government.  He is sworn to silence. Avner is recently married and he and his wife are expecting their first child; he is conflicted between his task as an assassin and his family. He visits his mother (Gila Almagor) to say good-bye; they speak of his father who deserted his wife and child for the sake of government work. The Mossad accountant demands receipts; he provides the only humor in the film, but at the same time his lack of concern for how the money will be used does little to balance the darkness to come.

 

Avner heads a team of four Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz), the bomb expert, but we find that his real expertise was in disarming bombs and making toys; Carl (Ciaran Hinds), a quiet, almost repressed individual who makes sure no evidence is left after ever incident; Steve (Daniel Craig and the new James Bond), drives the get-away car and is a marksman, and Hans (Hanns Zischler), who  forges their documents. With the help of a Frenchman named Louis (Mathieu Amalric), Avner discovers where the targets are staying. Louis also sets up safe houses for a price, all the while insisting that he does not work for governments. Louis’ father, “Papa” (Michael Lonsdale), an ex-World WarII French resistance fighter, is the actual head of Louis’ network, but his motivations, for all his protestations, seem murky. Papa is also the head of a large extended family that lives with him in the French country-side; the children laugh and play; they welcome Avner without judgment; they feel safe, as if the real world does not even exist.

 

One by one, the team assassinates the targets, first by rifle, then by bombs. Louis provides unstable explosives (or the toy-maker turned bomb-maker has made a mistake) and there is collateral damage – more people are killed than intended. Avner sneaks home when his child is born and tells his wife to move to Brooklyn. He senses that he and his family will become targets of Palestinian revenge - or worse.

 

The turning point of the film comes when Louis sets up a safe house one night for both Avner’s team and a Palestinian team. Although Avner does not know who the group is protecting or targeting, they sleep side by side in an uneasy rest. Avner and the head of the Palestinian group talk; “You don’t know what it’s like not to have a home,” he tells Avner. But Avner is realizing that he may have lost his "home" as well. Meanwhile, they later confront one another in a gun-grenade street battle; and a little more of Avner’s humanity disappears.

 

And every once in a while there are flashbacks to the Olympic Village events, to keep the fire going.

 

The team was told never to go to Arab countries to track anyone; yet they do; then they track down the woman who killed one of their team, and kill her. The revenge killings become personal. One by one, Avner’s team is killed or commits suicide, until only he and Steve are left.

 

Killing begets killing; no one knows who to trust. The violence escalates to unbelievable intensity, and I, for one, began to cry. It was impossible not to; the waste, the futility, the never-ending cycle of violence begetting violence; these beautiful young men and women destroyed, physically and spiritually, before theyhave a chance to live.

 

"Revenge" has been given credibility; it has been baptized, if you will, and made a "value" - something worth dying for, as if it were transcendent like justice, love, honesty, integrity. Even the most powerful nations on the earth, that should know better, know how to take revenge and they do. Defense and revenge are not the same thing.

 

Avner eventually stops after seven or so of the targets are killed; he and Steve return to Israel. Steve is interrogated and reveals Louis’ name but Avner will not give him up. Even though Louis’ loyalty is questionable, Avner won’t budge; his loyalty is not. Someone has to take a stand. Avner then joins his wife in Brooklyn; he believes the CIA is watching him, as it most surely interfered in one of their attempts in London. When he confronts the Israeli ambassador, Ephraim is sent to talk to him. He wants Avner back; they argue; Avner refuses. Just before they part, Avner says, “Wait; it says somewhere that we are to break bread together. Come to my home; let us break bread together.” Ephraim looks at him and says, “No”; he turns and walks away.

 

If the meeting with the Palestinian at the safe house was the turning point of the film, the ending was the final statement of the ideology the film was trying to explore: Ephraim, the representative of the Mossad and presumably the Israeli government, refused to break bread together, refused to make peace. Even though the film stopped, it is not over.

 

This film is no Schindler’s List or Saving Private Ryan; there are no heroes here, there is no moral center that anchors the “right” against the “wrong”. This is a complex film about complex human and political issues. I think the film wanted to give the audience a visceral experience of the on-going Israeli-Palestinian war (struggle? Seems much to mild a word) carried out through terrorist tactics. No one has clean hands. No one.

 

The acting is spot-on. Eric Bana was the one actor who stood out in Troy; here he proves that he can inhabit any role. 

 

There are motifs in the film; Spielberg’s “lonely child” theme is present, and here it is generational and crosses cultures. The toy/bomb-maker expresses it best, I think, in the toys he makes, almost compulsively. He is the first to “break”. With an almost total male cast, this film is an island of lost boys.

 

As I left the theater I had a conversation with three audience members; one was a teacher of Buddhism who was not a pacifist, who believed that some things are worth defending. I believe in defense, too, but I also believe that negotiation is the only way to peace, that is, to resolve conflict. Israel is a recognized state in the world today, but what of the people that were displaced in the process of its becoming a sovereign country? After almost sixty years, they are still without a homeland. 

 

Is it really in the world’s interest (the process of globalization unguided by human rights anddignity) that wars and terrorism continue? Several films in 2006 would have us think so(Lord of War, Syriana, The Constant Gardener, Paradise Now). These films challenge us and if we enter into them with our moral imaginations, perhaps we can find a way to contribute to peace-making based on justice. Without justice, there can be no peace.

 

Some may question the facts ofthe film. First of all, this is not a documentary(and we ought question documentaries aswell because they are made according to someone's particular point of view) so we can assume some fiction. The question is not: is the film factual, but is it true?

 

Munich will make you think; perhaps you will get out of the film what you bring to it; but perhaps, it will help all of us walk in the shoes of someone else for a while, and see things differently, that is, to see possibilities for peace and do something. 

 

Munich is not a feel-good movie, but it is a film that is filled with deeply felt life and pain – and too much death.

 

 

The New World

Opening on December 25th in Los Angeles and New York; wide release on January 13th.

 

 

Terrence Malick’s ambitious and idyllic cinematic imagining of the story of Pocahontas and Captain Smith opens in wide release on January 13th.  It will appeal to the romantics among us as well as Malick’s fans (Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line), though historians may tag it as revisionist. 

 

In 1607, thirteen years before the Pilgrims would land at Plymouth Rock, three small ships from England sail up a river in what would be Virginia and found a settlement they name Jamestown. Captain Newport (Christopher Plummer) leads the expedition and the men intend to look for treasure. One of the men, John Smith (Colin Farrell), is bound in chains, probably due to insubordination. He is soon released.

 

The tidewater and low country is lush, but food is low. Smith and some men travel up the Chickahominy River to look for food but encounter the Native American Powhatan tribe; all but Smith are killed. Smith is taken to the Powhatan village and remains there for several months, even going through a kind of ritual of acceptance into the tribe. He meets Chief Powhatan’s (August Schellenberg) daughter, the young Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher). They spend much time together wandering the wilderness and swimming in the river; Pocahontas teaches Smith their language and customs and Smith teaches her English. They become very attracted to one another.

 

Meanwhile, Captain Newport decides to return to England for supplies and more settlers.

 

Before winter sets in, Smith returns to the settlement with food. The men are near starvation and they are fighting among themselves. But in the spring, the Englishmen plant corn, a sign of permanence. When the tribesmen realize the English are not going away, they plan an attack. Pocahontas warns Smith and a battle ensues. When Chief Powhatan discovers that Pocahontas has betrayed them, he banishes her to another tribe. Later she is traded to the English for a copper pot.

 

Captain Newport returns with supplies and families for the colony and Smith decides to take a ship back to England without marrying Pocahontas. He has one of the soldiers tell her later that he died while crossing the ocean. She is heartbroken, but resigns herself to learn the ways of the English, putting on their clothing and shoes, and accepting Baptism because she can no longer return to any of the tribes.

 

There are many layers to The New World, as Malick, who also wrote the script, tries to give image to the myths and written accounts about the founding of the Jamestown colony from the perspective of both the Native Americans and the English. It is a new world for the English and the English, but most of all for Pocahontas who realizes this new Anglicized world is her only option for survival.

 

The amazing fifteen year-old actress Q’orianka Kilcher, a newcomer who plays Pocahontas with depth and maturity, said in an interview that the tight corset, clothing, and shoes must have felt like a prison to the young woman who was giving up her cultural identity to survive. The change of costume from native to western clothing, said Kilcher, helped her as an actress to feel and understand what life must have been like for Pocahontas who after her Baptism would be called Rebecca. In actual fact, we never learn the name of this young woman in the film until she receives a Christian name – Malick’s nod to both history and the myth.

 

Some historians will surely accuse Malick of revising history since he does give way to artistic license for dramatic effect in several places. For example letters and diaries say that Opechancanough, played by Wes Studi, was really Pocahontas’ brother but in the film he plays her uncle who accompanies her and John Rolfe (Christian Bale; Batman Begins) whom she later marries, to England. According to early diaries and letters, the young Native American woman we call Pocahontas was probably traded to at least two tribes, but Malick decided to simplify the story which is already complex enough. The most obvious difference between The New World’s account of John Smith in Virginia and what a documentary might reveal is that this story is told as a myth that emerges from a shared dream world inhabited by the thoughts and non-verbal communication of director Malick and the actors who seem to play their roles intuitively. 

 

Wes Studi, known for his strong personifications of Native Americans on television and in movies, attached himself to the project because of his interest in the work of the Indigenous Language Institute of Santa Fe, NM (www.indigenous-language.org). He said in an interview with representatives from faith-based publications that the Algonquian language used in The New World was re-created out of about 27 words that were phonetically recorded in early documents. To Studi, who belongs to the Cherokee Nation, The New World while “wonderfully shot in the waving grass” is told from the English perspective because it is the Native Americans who lose and have to change, while the English express their entitlement to this land given to them in a grant from King James for commercial purposes.

 

Producer Sarah Green said to the same group of journalists that Malick manages to blend in a critique of this mythic version of merging of two worlds by having the English say that the Native Americans have no greed or jealousy in their hearts and then shows through visuals that they are willing to sell Pocahontas for a kettle; the Native Americans are offended by the smell of the unwashed Europeans.

 

Colin Farrell plays John Smith as a moral man, who is adventurous and courageous. His love for the young Pocahontas seems authentic and true. 

 

Terrence Malick’ filmmaking is experimental, as one film reviewer noted, because he is creating a new language for film by the jarring non-linear editing style, dependence on non-verbal communication for most of the film, and relying on his own imagination for how the real characters felt as historical events unfolded. The voice-overs are often soliloquies that accompany long, contemplative sequences and reflect Malick’s spiritual style in filmmaking. Malick is in love with visuals as actor Christian Bale noted, “You have the script and then depart from it completely, leaving out the dialogue”. Q’orianka Kilcher described working with Malick as, “If he saw the grass blowing a certain way, he’d just start filming it.” Then, “Because Malick would scrap dialogue, it was up to me to express what Pocahontas was feeling.” 

 

The New World is not a political or historical film; it’s an emotional experience – a visual treat for Malick fans. The New World is not an explicitly Christian film per se, although Pocahontas is baptized and the church is one of the first buildings to go up within the stockade. If anything, the film shows her to be a survivor who is resigned to her situation because being English and Christian is effectively the same thing. She quietly makes the best of blending two worlds although, as we know, it will lead to the eventual death of many Native American cultures. The New World could be a starting point, accessible to junior high students and up, to study the history of European colonization with parallels for today, if you want to give the film a contemporary reading. In my opinion, this aspect makes the film interesting for Christians and people of good will because human dignity and other principles of Catholic social teaching can elicit conversation about things that matter.

 

The child of Pocahontas and John Rolfe was the first inter-racial child born in the colonies; his descendents live on today.

 

With over one million feet of film shot for The New World, which Malick actually wrote the script for some 25 years ago (long before the 1995 Disney version of Pocahontas’ life), the final cut is 180 minutes long. Producer Sarah Green is betting that the extended version of the DVD will be even better.

 

Brokeback Mountain

In the summer of 1963 a lone cowboy, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) walks into a tiny Wyoming town looking for ranch work. As he waits to be hired, Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) arrives in his old pickup truck. Both are hired to tend sheep at Brokeback Mountain by Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid). One is stay at the main camp, and the other is to stay with the sheep – against National Park Service rules - though they are to take meals together.

 

Ennis is strong, silent and seems very lonely. His parents were killed long ago in a car wreck and he was raised by his brother and sister until they married. Now alone, he looks for work but plans to marry a girl names Alma (Michelle Williams) come November. Jack is more open, mostly works at his parents’ ranch and has been in the rodeo; he obviously prefers to be away from home. Jack is attracted to Ennis almost from the start and seems to have a sense that Ennis would be open to his advances. One night when it turns cold they share the tent and Jack makes his move. Ennis resists - at first.

 

As the days go by Ennis makes it clear it was only a one time thing for him. Soon after, Joe rides down to the camp, and from a distance sees the two men kind of wrestling together. He cuts short their summer work. Ennis and Jack go their separate ways. Ennis marries Alma and has two children. He struggles to make a living for them. Jack hits the rodeo circuit and about three years later meets Lureen Newsome (Anne Hathaway), the daughter of a wealthy man who sells farm machinery. Soon after, Jack sends a postcard to Ennis, rekindling their friendship – and more. Ennis responds and Jack arrives a couple of weeks later. Alma sees them greet each other with hungry kisses and is horrified.

 

For the next twenty years, the men keep up a relationship, meeting a few times a year to pretend to go fishing at Brokeback Mountain. Jack wants them to leave their wives and get a cabin and live and work together. Ennis cannot let himself do that. Jack looks for consolation in Mexico while Ennis considers remarrying after he and  Alma divorce.

 

Brokeback Mountain is a beautifully filmed movie; the natural landscape contrasting with what “the rules” consider the men’s unnatural relationship to be. It amazes me that director Ang Lee is able to enter credibly into so many different cultures to produce his films (e.g. Sense and Sensibility; The Hulk). I think the four main actors carry out their roles very well.

 

However, from the story perspective, I didn’t find the characters of Ennis and Jack or their highly romanticized relationship completely believable; their character development was one dimensional, that is, the here and now, on the surface only. What I did feel was empathy for Ennis’ loneliness, and even Jack’s at the end when we finally meet his parents in their broken down, barren ranch house. Jack’s father seems to have known his son was gay from the time he was small, and this is something for which he has not forgiven him. He seems to hate his son, and this sequence had an element of reality to it. When Ennis finds his old shirt and denim jacket in Jack’s boyhood room, I wondered if he missed Jack because of his great loneliness, or because of their relationship. Maybe we are not supposed to know for sure; perhaps people who have lived this experience have better insight to this story than I do.

 

As all media educators will tell you, entertainment media normalize behaviors. When did it become normal for men and women to live together before marriage? Did the media cause this phenomenon, or were they acknowledging something that was already a given, just that nobody talked about it? By telling stories about a subject that Christians and others believe to be immoral behavior, do the media promote it because of the implicit authority the media possess? Was this film produced because someone has an agenda? I don't know.

 

But I would question, rather, whether or not there is a universal conflict in this film that would compare to the majestic landscape against which the story plays out (and providesthe obvious phallic symbolism throughout.) I think the film is representative of postmodern filmmaking because while Ennis seems to be conflicted about his sexual orientation, neither character wrestles with his conscience, or any objective sense of morality but rather with the culture – and not getting caught and punished by the culture (that Joe seems to represent.) 

 

The Church teaches that the joy and pain of all human living can be the subject of story-telling and drama. Brokeback Mountain, based on a short story by E. Annie Proulx, certainly is about the search for joy and genuine pain, but I didn’t find transcendence here, mutuality, or authentic sacrifice, so dramatically and spirtually the film falls short for me. While a nod is given to the horror and injustice of hate crimes, and a father withholding love because of his son’s sexual orientation, the film, to me, was ultimately barren - and maybe this is the feeling the film wanted to evoke.

 

Brokeback Mountain is a difficult film. The important thing to remember, to me, is that Christ accepted everyone, and never mistreated anyone.  Also, it would be interesting to look at the theology of this film, because though Ennis and Jack do not seem to have a relationship with God or a church, there is frequent mention of God.

Memoirs of a Geisha

In the late 1920’s two young girls from rural Japan are sold by their father into indentured servitude because their mother is dying and he cannot care for them. A middle-man takes the girls to a town near Osaka, a major industrial center. One girl, the nine-year old, blue-eyed Chiyo (Suzuka Ohgo) is left at one house of Geisha, the sister at another. The “mother” or owner of Chiyo’s house notices Chiyo's blue eyes and says she sees much water in them - something that turns out to be true. She decides to send Chiyo and Pumpkin (Zoe Weizenbaum), another young girl, to a school to train to be Geisha. But Chiyo goes out at night to try and find her sister and is beaten when she returns. Mother makes her a servant to the house instead; Chiyo’s debt to the house mounts with each infration.

 

There is a Geisha in the house who persecutes Chiyo. Her name is Hatsumono (Li Gong), and she is threatened by Chiyo from the day she arrives.

 

One day when Chiyo is sitting on a bridge, crying for her sister, a man, accompanied by a Geisha, is kind to her. He gives her his handkerchief and buys her a sweet ice. The Geisha calls him Mr. Chairman (Ken Watanabe), and Chiyo determines that one day she will accompany him. It becomes her life’s ambition to gain him as her patron.

 

The Geisha Mameha (Michelle Yeoh) comes to Mother one day when Chiyo is about 16, and proposes that if she can get top price for Chiyo’s virginity, that both Mameha and Chiyo will be free. Mother agrees to the deal, and Mameha becomes Chiyo’s mentor and gives her a new name, Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang). All of a sudden, Sayuri must learn to be a Geisha in a matter of months rather than years. At her debut, Mameha takes her to a sumo match and introduces her to none other than The Chairman and his business partner Nabu (Koji Yakusho). Mameha insists that Sayuri get the attention of Nabu, who has a scarred face, so that Hatsumono, who is also present, will not find more reasons to spread lies about Sayuri and lower her value. The Chairman recognizes Sayuri but out of friendship for Nabu, lets her go. For Sayuri, the Chairman’s handkerchief is her lifeline to freedom.

 

This is really only the set-up for the main part of the film which is about Sayuri becoming a Geisha, and the conflict she must live with: her own desires for life, wanting to be with the Chairman, and the cultural constraints of her only option for survival as a Geisha, or as a prostitute if she were to ever run away from the house that protects her.

 

Based on the best-selling novel by Arthur Golden and directed by Chicago’s Rob Marshall, Memoirs of a Geisha is a beautifully rendered film, filled with pathos, female ambition, cat-fighting, betrayal, and revenge - a hard world of women who powdered their faces to hide their faces, their real selves. The film teaches the audience about what it means to be a Geisha, a word that means art. Geishas were well educated and highly cultured young women who entertained married men; to find one as a patron was the ultimate security since this would give the Geisha an income for her house and a place to live out her life. Geishas, at least before World War II, were not prostitutes although losing their virginity to the highest bidder was their entrée into a culture of kept women who would only ever be “half wives.”

 

The film finishes before the novel does, which ends with Sayuri in New York. After viewing this beautiful film for 90 minutes or so the American soldiers who occupy Japan after World War II enter the picture and their rowdy, crass behavior clashes so badly with the refined tone of the film (as it is supposed to do) that I felt like someone was scraping their fingernails on a blackboard. Extremely effective.

 

Most film reviewers have already commented on the fact that most of the actors are not Japanese; unfortunately, most of us will not notice. What we do notice, however, is the fine, nuanced, felt performances of all the actors. Also, Arthur Golden is a man and not Japanese either and we wonder how he is an authority on this subject. I cannot answer that; but I did read the book a few years ago, and I think the film interprets it very, very well.

 

In a culture, in a world and moral universe that is far away, women in bondage struggled for freedom in any way they could. This film made me pray that women of all cultures be free to choose their own destinies, rather than only those made available to them by cultures controlled by men.