Memoirs of a Geisha

2005 | Rob Marshall

In 1929 an impoverished nine-year-old named “Chiyo” from a fishing village is sold to a geisha house in kyoto’s gion district and subjected to cruel treatment from the owners and the head Geisha Hatsumomo.

Based on the novel by Arthur Golden, so most of the story was fictional. In the very beginning, you would hear people talking and whispering in Japanese with no subtitle at all. Then when young “Chiyo” was brought to her new house in Kyoto. She magically knew how to speak English! Through out the movie, audience should prepare themselves to listen to strange English accent. That was no problem with me, but it was kinda annoying when every character spoke English and Japanese at the same time, shouldn’t they stick to one language when they were talking? You would hear something like ‘O-ga-san’, ‘Arigato’, ‘O-ne-san’ and so on along with English sentences.

The plot was totally a fiction and nothing like the true story. “Chiyo” miraculously became the highest-priced geisha ever within a matter of months with the training by “Mameha” the legendary Geisha.

However I did enjoy the first part of young “Chiyo” played by 大後寿々花 (Suzuka Ohgo), she was brilliant! I believe she could be a great star of tomorrow.

Gong Li’s performance in the role of “Hatsumomo” was stunning. She nailed it every time she appeared on the screen, everybody else just faded into the background even “Zhang Ziyi”.

Lastly, if you’re interested in true story of Geisha, I’d suggest you go get a book called “Geisha, A Life” which was written by real Geisha 岩崎峰子 (Mineko Iwasaki) who inspired Arthur Golden, the author of Memoirs of Geisha. The book is available in Thai and English. The original Japanese title is 祇園の教訓―昇る人、昇りきらずに終わる人.

I really hope that Japanese movie studio would pick the book “Geisha, A Life” and make it to big screen in original Japanese dialogue someday.