“A story like mine should never be told. For my world is as for­bid­den as it is frag­ile. With­out its mys­ter­ies it can­not sur­vive. I cer­tainly wasn’t born to the life of a geisha. Like so much in my strange life, I was car­ried there by the current. ”

Who is a Geisha ? [ Trisha illeenga :) ]. Geisha means artist or a per­form­ing artist.

We have very lim­ited knowl­edge about the other rare breeds of peo­ple and cul­ture [ Sumo wrestlers, Eski­mos, etc., ]. Books and cin­ema are the sources to open up the doors for our knowl­edge. You might have come across a cat­e­gory of peo­ple in Andhra Pradesh called ‘Daasi’. A film came in 1989, on this sub­ject which yielded national award for actor Archana. Daasi is a slave breed, where they send the Daasi girls as part of mar­riage gift as maids. They have their own bleak world.

The world of geisha is pecu­liar and more cer­e­mo­nial. Their entire life is all about get­ting rec­og­nized as a Geisha. First, I won­dered why Steven Spiel­berg opted for pro­duc­ing a movie based on a Japan­ese cul­ture [ even direct­ing it — and del­e­gated later ]. It’s because of the poetic nature of the nar­ra­tion and a sub­tle sor­row n free­dom of a poor girl. This story is based on a novel writ­ten by Arthur Golden.

Plot

” We do not become Geisha to pur­sue our own des­tines. We become Geisha because we have no other choice. ”

It’s a typ­i­cal Cin­drella story with stun­ning visu­als told in the back­drop of Japan.

The film begins off in the late 1920s. On a rainy day, a young girl Chiyo and her sis­ter are sold by her fam­ily. They are sold to geisha’s house as maids. Life becomes tough for the poor girl as no one shows kind­ness to her [ fairy tale nar­ra­tion ! ]. There’s another girl called pump­kin who is trained to become a geisha and one more senior girl [ Hat­sumomo ] who plans com­pletely against Chiyo. Chiyo meets one par­tic­u­lar per­son on road, [ a soft hearted chair­man ] who treats her very kindly, which she never felt before. She devel­ops an unknown respect and love towards the chair­man. This is the first part of the story of the girl.

Sayuri, later in a dif­fer­ent sta­tus, gets her final chance to show­case her skills as a geisha and get an offer. Her life con­tin­ues to be be painful with hatred, back­stab­bing and jeal­ous. Did she live a life that she wanted ?

View

- It’s a visual treat. Right from the first frame, the film is pre­sented with exotic and beau­ti­ful shots. In VLC plyer, there’s an option to con­vert any frame of the film to a wall­pa­per. This film worth all the frames :) . The other film, I rec­ol­lect is ‘Anna and the King’ [ Thai based ].

- The story as you read is sim­ple but slow. No action sequences, thrilling moments or hilar­i­ous wits. The story flows just like a stream. Like Geishas, the film con­cen­trates more on the out­look rather than the emo­tions [ Fan­tas­tic sets, extra­or­di­nary visu­als, fine costumes ].

- The next beau­ti­ful aspect was the music, of course. The efforts to recre­ate Japan in 1930, Sumo wrestling, houses, espe­cially cos­tumes [ Kimonos — sim­i­lar to silk saree ] are laud­able. This movie has won acad­emy award for cin­e­matog­ra­phy, art direc­tion and costumes.

- The water ele­ment in this movie is attrac­tively por­trayed. The film starts with rain, sea side fish­ing vil­lage, ends in a small park with a pond. The hero­ine her­self is iden­ti­fied as an ele­ment of water as per their tradition.

- They were able to find a girl as well as an adult with same attrib­utes of twin­kling blue eyes. Those eyes express love, sor­row, pain and what not. [ Chi­nese pon­nudaa.. Vittu vei­daa.:) ]. There were hand­ful of scenes, where the girl smiles fully. Even the emo­tions of the geisha are muted.

- The hero­ine Ziyi Zhang has done stu­pen­dous job as Geisha. The sur­prise is she is from China and played this Japan­ese tra­di­tional character.

- I liked the chiyo and Hat­sumomo char­ac­ters equally as they por­tray the good and evil natures very easily.

- Sayuri doesn’t cry in the movie, though she had moments for the same. Also, express­ing love. Geisha is not accus­tomed to express her love eas­ily and that jus­ti­fies her action in the movie.

- The demer­its are it’s a com­plete girl movie and the pace. The chair­man — sayuri rela­tion doesn’t make an impact. A frag­ile Geisha. The other issues are that they speak Eng­lish [ Why the hell ! ] and romance rela­tion­ship lacks the grip.[ Un expec­ta­tion puriyudhu :) ].

Con­clu­sion

Geishas are def­i­nitely not pros­ti­tutes [ at least, that’s my wish :) ]. This movie is a dif­fer­ent genre and serves the pur­pose of soft enter­tain­ment. “Geisha is an artist of the float­ing world. She dances, she sings, she enter­tains you… What ever you want… the rest is shad­ows, the rest is secret.” — So was the movie.. It sings, it dances and it enter­tains.. but slowly.

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