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thomasreeve
Reviews
Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
Beautiful.
Just returned from a BAFTA preview screening of Memoirs of a Geisha, and it's certainly the best film I've seen this year so far (and there isn't exactly long left.) The performances are outstanding, everything about the physical setting and cinematography is breathtaking, and it's emotionally rich without feeling twee or sentimental.
The Q&A session also reinforced the fact that, despite this being an American-produced film of a novel by an American author, a great deal of both research, training and supervision on-set went into making, for example, the movements of the geisha as authentic as possible. The issue of non-Japanese actors playing Japanese roles was also addressed - Rob Marshall (the director) stated quite plainly that, as far as he was concerned, he wanted the best actors for the parts - I'm perfectly happy to give him the benefit of the doubt here, as the members of the cast in question acted their socks off. The reaction has, apparently, been equally positive in Japan, where actors like Ziyi Zhang are anything but unknown.
Certainly if you want to see a beautiful, thoughtful, emotional film centred around a little-understood but fascinating aspect of Japanese culture, see this as soon as possible.