memoirs of a geisha
I think I figured out what was bothering me about Memoirs of a Geisha: the movie rarely showed how the characters saw the world. It felt like they were detached from it, but it's a story that tries to depict an era and culture.
There are several scenes early in the movie where the children crawl up the ladders in tall, narrow store rooms. Looking back, those felt the most genuine shots of the movie. I could understand their peculiarly careful movements in the midst of the cramped woodwork as they tried to avoid banging elbows and losing their footing, the mice that they were in a labyrinth full of cats. They moved like they had lived there and it was shot through their eyes.
After that though, it felt terribly hollow. What should have appeared to be the culmination of perfection of the geishas' art was reduced to something effortless and superficial in the movie. They were clean but looked like they had never been dirty. Their clothes looked so crisp that they could have been paper. They walked through a city that was as characterless as a cut-out.
So don't retain the later images that the movie assembled, but try to imagine the character that fit the role their role historically. A powdered and sculptured geisha walking on the street, shining like a jewel of unfathomable depths, would have every person aware of them and leave them wide berth. This must have been a world of grime and smoke, but the geisha would have been so immaculate in their presentation that the effort would have been painstaking to anyone not considering it their art. It took work and they were striking in their world, and without one the other fades.
I was disappointed.
There are several scenes early in the movie where the children crawl up the ladders in tall, narrow store rooms. Looking back, those felt the most genuine shots of the movie. I could understand their peculiarly careful movements in the midst of the cramped woodwork as they tried to avoid banging elbows and losing their footing, the mice that they were in a labyrinth full of cats. They moved like they had lived there and it was shot through their eyes.
After that though, it felt terribly hollow. What should have appeared to be the culmination of perfection of the geishas' art was reduced to something effortless and superficial in the movie. They were clean but looked like they had never been dirty. Their clothes looked so crisp that they could have been paper. They walked through a city that was as characterless as a cut-out.
So don't retain the later images that the movie assembled, but try to imagine the character that fit the role their role historically. A powdered and sculptured geisha walking on the street, shining like a jewel of unfathomable depths, would have every person aware of them and leave them wide berth. This must have been a world of grime and smoke, but the geisha would have been so immaculate in their presentation that the effort would have been painstaking to anyone not considering it their art. It took work and they were striking in their world, and without one the other fades.
I was disappointed.