The Wichitan - Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls Texas

MIDWESTERN STATE UNIVERSITY | February 1, 2006

ENTERTAINTMENT

Chinese intensely rewarding break from normal viewing experience
Richard Carter | For The Wichitan

While memories may trace the past, they are also stained with personal hopes, regrets and denials.

Director Kar Wai Wong’s heady and exotic “2046” colorfully revives a noir writer’s memories of the melancholic 1960s Hong Kong nightclub and hotel life.

Saturated with stylish nightclub music, lithe cocktail gowns, failed relationships and emotionally tortured characters, this recently released DVD is a treat for viewers who appreciate psychological dramas, in a kind of meticulously crafted Stanley Kubrick vein.

“2046” follows Kar Wai Wong’s moody and darkly gorgeous “In the Mood For Love” (2000) about two characters, Chow Mo Wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li Zhen (Maggie Cheung), who embark on an intense, if failed, romance after discovering their spouses are having an affair.

The elegantly mysterious Su Li Zhen leaves the mild mannered and well-dressed writer (a made-to-suffer type), and their immediate relationship is over.

“2046” picks the story up several years later, and focuses on Chow Mo Wan’s subsequent writings and romances. Working on a science fiction story titled “2046,” the writer has become a very different man.

Chow Mo Wan appropriates the intriguing characters he meets in the Hotel Oriental he lives in and writes these women into storylines saturated with his memories of Su Li Zhen.

His sci-fi story “2046” is about a future place people travel to live in the memories of past relationships. The movie “2046” is about a writer fictionally altering women he meets to address his memories of a lost romance.

Profoundly sad and heartbreaking, the film’s profound look into memory, personality and romance is fascinating.

“2046” is difficult to appreciate on a first viewing. The movie’s only obvious qualities are its cinematography, lighting and costuming. That, and the fact, it’s blessed with memorable performances by a solid cast of well-known Chinese and Japanese actors.

“Memoirs of a Geisha” fans will appreciate significant appearances by Li Gong as a gambler named Su Li Zhen (Cheung appears briefly as Su Li Zhen from the first film) and Ziyi Zhang who plays a tempestuous call-girl named Bai Ling.

Also of note is the actress Faye Wong, who plays the hotel owner’s quiet daughter who is in love with an off-limits Japanese businessman (Takuya Kimura). Faye Wong also appears as a soulless android in an expressly futuristic “2046” film scene alongside Kimura’s slacker character.

The somewhat meandering storyline of “2046” is developed through the writer’s relationships with four women, beginning with a party girl named Lulu /Mimi (Carina Lau). The action takes place around a hotel room numbered 2046, coincidentally the year that Hong Kong will be legally immersed back into China.

I found it helpful to be familiar with the worthwhile “In the Mood for Love” before viewing “2046.” Much of the latter film’s thematic settings and basic characters are established in the earlier movie.

“2046” is not a simple film to be casually appreciated. Multi-layered and demanding, it’s a four-day, five-night rental. Difficult, yes, but the director’s blending of strong lyrical images and a little poetic editing to tell a complex story of memory and romance is ultimately intoxicating and rewarding.

Golden's Novel Refreshingly Insightful
Jason York | Staff Reporter

Arthur Golden’s “Memoirs of a Geisha” is a fascinating glimpse into Japanese culture during the first half of the twentieth century.

Although presented as a memoir, the novel is entirely fictitious. The “translators note,” which precedes the narration of Nitta Sayuri, is simply a device intended to give the impression that the novel is really a memoir.

“Memoirs” could certainly be classified as historical fiction. Its insights into the elite world of Kyoto geisha are well-researched and accurate. Golden takes no artistic license. The characters are believable, and the plot takes no illogical turns into anything remotely resembling implausibility.

The main character is a woman named Nitta Sayuri who lives in New York City. Old, quaint, and refreshingly witty, she decides to tell her story to rid the world of some of its misconceptions of geisha.

Sayuri explains that geisha are not prostitutes, as many Western people mistakenly believe. They are “artisans” who sell their skills, not their bodies. Those skills, in the highest echelons of geisha, include dance, music, and tea ceremony.

Once she has cleared up a few misconceptions about what a geisha is and does, Sayuri begins telling her story. Born and raised in the tiny village of Yoroido in a “tipsy” house by the sea, her name as a child was Sakamoto Chiyo.

Her eyes, bright like the sea, distinguished her from many other girls. People told her she had too much “water” in her, but as she soon discovered, that was not such a bad thing. Water is strong and has a way of finding hidden paths that no one else sees.

One day, Mr. Tanaka arrives at their house and carries off Chiyo and her sister, Satsu. He puts them on a train bound for Kyoto, only what neither one of them knows is that they’ve been sold – Chiyo to an okiya and Satsu to a whorehouse.

Chiyo’s life at the okiya is strange and difficult at first, but she quickly adapts to being a housemaid. The Nitta okiya houses one of the most well-known geisha in Gion named Hatsumomo. From the very moment of Chiyo’s arrival, Hatsumomo senses a rival and proceeds to make life unbearable for the girl.

Hatsumomo’s intense self-importance and sense of self-preservation compel her to destroy a rival geisha’s kimono. Bringing the kimono to Chiyo, Hatsumomo forces her to destroy the kimono with ink. She then sends Chiyo to return the kimono to its owner, a legendary geisha named Mameha.

Mameha will eventually lead Chiyo out of her servant’s life to become one of the most famous geisha of all time, but this transformation depends on an event that seems to have everything to do with chance. One day, while running an errand, Chiyo stops to cry on a bridge. A man identified as the Chairman stops to console her and buys her a snow cone. This chance meeting is the impetus for Chiyo’s dramatic transformation.

Totally in love with the Chairman, Chiyo runs to the temple, makes a deposit, and asks the gods to make her a geisha. Her prayer is granted, although she must undergo rigorous training to make up for all the time she has lost.

Eventually, Chiyo becomes Sayuri, the most desired geisha in all of Gion. She suffers the agony of having to entertain men she doesn’t care for while she plots and schemes her way to her beloved Chairman. After an agonizing period of waiting, during which World War II ravages Japan, Sayuri finally manages to get the Chairman for herself, at least as far as being “the other woman” goes.

At certain points the novel bogs down with detail, but it seems that many of the descriptive passages need to be there to slow things down. At times the plot speeds along like a runaway train, and it’s nice to have a break every fifty pages or so.

The characters are, for the most part, as delicate and fragile as the world they inhabit. When Kyoto is occupied by American troops after the end of the war, their presence is embarrassingly vulgar and unrefined. Nevertheless, Sayuri manages to retain her grace and mystery.

The motion picture adaptation of “Memoirs of a Geisha” failed to bring the beauty and drama of the book to the screen. Although starring one of Asia’s most talented actresses, Ziyi Zhang (“House of Flying Daggers”), the film just didn’t have quite the same appeal. It deviated significantly from the book, especially by replacing a Japanese general with an American. The complete absence of Sayuri’s “mizuage” with Dr. Crab was also disappointing.

Visually, the film is nearly as breath-taking as any of the finest Asian films of the past several years. Sayuri’s dramatic dance sequence is worth seeing on the big screen. Sadly, if the movie had an Asian director instead of Rob Marshall, it may have been worth seeing more than once.

*three stars

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

78^th Annual Academy Awards Nominations

Performance By An Actor In a Leading Role

Philip Seymour Hoffman – “Capote”

Terrence Howard – “Hustle & Flow”

Heath Ledger – “Brokeback Mountain”

Joaquin Phoenix – “Walk the Line”

David Strathairn – “Good Night and Good Luck”

Performance By an Actor in a Supporting Role

George Clooney – “Syriana”

Matt Dillon – “Crash”

Paul Giamatti – “Cinderella Man”

Jake Gyllenhaal – “Brokeback Mountain”

William Hurt – “A History of Violence”

Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role

Judi Dench – “Mrs. Henderson Presents”

Felicity Huffman – “Transamerica”

Keira Knightly – “Pride & Prejudice”

Charlize Theron – “North Country”

Reese Witherspoon – “Walk the Line”

Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role

Amy Adams – “Junebug”

Catherine Keener – “Capote”

Frances McDormand – North Country”

Rachel Weisz – “The Constant Gardener”

Michelle Willams – “Brokeback Mountain”

Best Animated Feature Film of the Year

“Howl’s Moving Castle”

“Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride”

“Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit”

Achievement in Art Direction

“Good Night, and Good Luck”

“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”

“King Kong”

“Memoirs of a Geisha”

“Pride & Prejudice”

Achievement in Cinematography

“Batman Begins”

“Brokeback Mountain”

“Good Night, and Good Luck”

“Memoirs of a Geisha”

“The New World”

Achievement in Costume Design

“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”

“Memoirs of a Geisha”

“Pride & Prejudice”

“Walk the Line”

Achievement in Directing

“Brokeback Mountain”

“Capote”

“Crash”

“Good Night, and Good Luck”

“Munich”

Best Documentary Feature

“Darwin’s Nightmare”

“Enron: The Smartest Guys in he Room”

“March of the Penguins”

“Murderball”

“Street Fight”

Best Documentary Short Subject

“The Death of Kenin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club”

“God Sleeps in Rwanda”

“The Mushroom Club”

“A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin”

Achievement in Film Editing

“Cinderella Man”

“The Constant Gardener”

“Crash”

“Munich”

“Walk the Line”

Best Foreign Language Film of the Year

“Don’t Tell”

“Joyeux Noel”

“Paradise Now”

“Sophie Scholl – The Final Days”

“Tsotsi”

Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures

(Original Score)

“Brokeback Mountain”

“The Constant Gardener”

“Memoirs of a Geisha”

“Munich”

“Pride & Prejudice”

Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures

(Original song)

“In the Deep” – “Crash”

“It’s Hard out Here for a Pimp” – “Hustle & Flow”

“Travelin’ Thru” – “Transamerica”

Best Motion Picture of a Year

“Brokeback Mountain”

“Capote”

“Crash”

“Good Night, and Good Luck”

“Munich”

Best Animated Short Film

“Badgered”

“The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation”

“The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello”

“9”

“One man Band”

Best Live Action Short Film

“Ausreisser (The Runway)”

“Cashback”

“The Last Farm”

“Our Time is up”

“Six Shooter”

Achievement in Sound Editing

“King Kong”

“Memoirs of a Geisha”

“War of the Worlds”

Achievement in Sound Mixing

“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe”

“King Kong”

“Memoirs of a Geisha”

“Walk the Line”

“War of the Worlds”

Achievement in Visual Effects

“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion. The Witch and the Wardrobe”

“King Kong”

“War of the Worlds”

Adapted Screenplay

“Brokeback Mountain”

“Capote”

“The Constant Gardener”

“A History of Violence”

“Munich”

Original Screenplay

“Crash”

“Good Night, and Good Luck”

“Match Point”

“The Squid and the Whale”

“Syriana”