HLJ's Movie Blog

Memoirs of a Geisha

Memoirs of a Geisha is a beautiful movie to watch. No wonder it won the Oscar for Best Cinematography. I often marveled at how the shots were composed in this movie. My two favorites are:

1. When Nobu confesses to Sayuri that he wants to be her danna. He stands behind her and holds her. Light reflects off the surface of water onto their faces and bodies, recalling the fact that Sayuri, as a child, was often told that she had too much water
2. After Sayuri has become a full geisha, she stands before the mirror and instead of seeing her reflection - the reflection of herself in full geisha regalia - little Chiyo-chan stands there at Sayuri's feet. She may be a geisha on the outside, but there is still a little girl full of dreams inside her.

Little things like this are what make the cinematography spectacular...that is if you are paying attention. My favorite part of the book was the whole process of Chiyo-chan becoming a geisha; her training, the culture...everything. It was fascinating to read about geisha training and daily routines. (Aside: I would love to spend all day learning to dance and play music.) All of these things that took up pages and pages in the book were captured in a shot. It was amazing. For example, there was a lengthy discussion in the book on how a geisha doesn't paint her neck entirely. One shot of Sayuri applying her makeup and leaving part of her neck untouched was all it took to give us this information. Perhaps the filmmakers were reliant upon the fact that people watching the film had read the book in order for this information to be passed along. I picked up on this, did you?

When I read the book, I was completely annoyed by the love story between Sayuri and the Chairman. I thought it was rather irrelevant, since I was only interested in the geisha training and culture. However, the movie made the love story more interesting. A simple shot of the Chairman looking at Sayuri was enough to keep me intrigued. Two things are at work here: first the Kuleshov effect, which basically causes the viewer to infer things from how shots are combined, and second - this is something that Hitchcock used all the time - tension. I know that the two of them end up together, so I'm just waiting for the end. This is Hitchcock-ian - if that's a word - since he was awfully fond of increasing the tension in a film by revealing the source of the tension to the audience (the bomb is under the table) while keeping the characters in the movie in suspense (they don't know the bomb is under the table ticking away). Everyone knows that Sayuri and the Chairman will eventually have a long love affair, but how do they find one another through all their troubles? That's the suspense and the intrigue and what makes the love story in the movie more compelling.

What more can I say about this movie? Well, it made me cry a lot. It was the type of crying that you do because you know that you will never know that kind of happiness, the kind of happiness that only exists in movies and fairy tales. No one is ever going to wait years and years to confess their love for me. Maybe I'm just feelling a little envy...hey, isn't that a movie I just commented on? I've been feeling that feeling quite a bit lately. You know, that you'll never experience that in your life and you're missing something because of it. Such as whenever I see children - which I love - I feel sad because I know that I will never have any more of my own. What a pity, since I think I'm actually a pretty good mom.

Whoa! Gotten a bit off course, haven't I? Okay, if you've read the book, the movie is a lot different. It's worth watching, but don't expect for a moment that you are going to get the same point of view narration that you get in the book.