Saturday, January 14, 2006

Memoirs of A Geisha

Finally finished reading this novel after having the book for almost a month. My initial plan was to finish this book before I go watch the movie. I planned that I would have lots of travelling time in Japan and I could read more than half the book by the time I would be back in Singapore.

In the end, I actually caught the movie in Virgin Toho, Roppongi Hills cinema in Tokyo. Well, Japan and USA had the world premiere, we dudes in Singapore had to wait till January. After watching the show, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a good box office hit in USA and Japan, maybe Singapore too. In any sense, Gong Li's performance was much more convincing than Zhang Ziyi's. And that Zhang Manyu would have been a really much better choice Michelle Yeoh as the role of Mameha. In any case, 3 good actresses from Japan would have pulled off this Hollywood production also.

To make things worse, I ended up reading only 5 chapters while I was in Japan, so when I came back, I wondered if I would even want to finish reading this book. Well, luckily I did.

Usual of movie adapted from a novel, the front and the back are truncated but the movie does follow very closely to the novel. For entertainment value i suppose, so that we don't get bored by the long introduction and the not so happy ending. Some parts were also different from the novel, probably the Hollywood producers couldn't stand more Asian men to be casted...

Finally when I was reading the acknowledgements at the end of the book, I realised that the author did not really interview a geisha as he had written at the start of the novel. It was purely fiction. Sayuri and the interview never existed. Arthur Golden did do extensive research with a few japanese friends who were geishas.

As yogi has mentioned, think this novel is going to be included in the JS module, maybe even in this semester, strike whie the iron is hot yea?

1 Comments:

Blogger sleepy said...

I don't like the movie! it's not no variation in pace. and after reading the book, there is no surprises any more. not much visual effects seen also.

since u asked, ya gong li was better than zhang ziyi in the show, though i dislike them both. but even gong li wasn't allowed enough room to show the depth of the character. i could sense her rushing in portraying. trying too hard i must say, but better than the rest not trying at all.

5:31 PM  

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