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Rating:
Break down all the mental cages that confine your ideas, thoughts, and opinions. Much of Japan is here. Much else is missing.
The geisha. First of all, a geisha is not a prostitute. Prostitutes do not train from childhood to play the koto. They do not learn to dance to its sound. They do not learn the art of fans and the tea ceremony. They do not know refined, silent manners studied to seduce a man. They are not artists.
This film is intended for lovers of Japan, its customs and its language; its rigidity and its beauty. It is the story of a change in tradition and at the same time the story of the survival of certain ancient customs. It is the story of a sold girl. Chiyo, this is her first name, finds herself forced to become an apprentice geisha because of her budding charm. Literally catapulted into the ancient capital Kyoto and forcibly separated from the sister she will never see again, she faces a whole new life, not without surprises. The okiya (the tea house) where she lives her early years almost as a prisoner, turns out to be the most suitable place for her survival. The only way to survive is to seize the opportunity fate has presented: the possibility of becoming the most famous geisha in the city. The conflict with Hatsumomo, the most renowned and sought-after woman, who also belongs to the same okiya, will make everything not very simple and will often put the young girl in the position to prove how geishas can actually be a real instrument of power. Mameha, Hatsumomo's rival, will take Chiyo under her wing and manage to make her a well-established geisha, making her historical in the memory of an ancient world slowly falling apart.
This is the story, yes. Essential and vague so as not to spoil the enjoyment of watching this film. But the real pearls are elsewhere.
What makes this film a true masterpiece is above all the deviation from what could have been obvious clichés about the oriental world. The world of shadow and sobriety is rendered with incomparable mastery: everything that Japan could represent in the eyes of a foreigner but also to its own eyes is painted with that poetic and delicate touch that only a Japanese calligrapher could have. The detailed knowledge of every single accessory and habit of geishas cannot leave one without any reaction. Nor can the beautiful depiction of a declining world be underestimated: the film seems divided in two. The first part sees a world of kimonos and cherry blossoms, a rich life for geishas and geisha lovers. Then the scenario changes. World War II, the Americans, and a contaminated microcosm never to be recovered again. What remains? But, of course, the sentiment par excellence, which, as never before in Japan, takes on such platonic and poetic connotations. Chiyo is now Sayuri. With her new name and perfect figure of a geisha with grey-blue eyes, she arrives, after many tough events, to get as a danna (patron) the man for whom she decided to embark on this path to the best of her abilities. Obviously as a lover, never as a wife. As a woman of the shadow, never of the light.
A film to love entirely if one has loved the novel. A faithful adaptation as dedicated as possible to a deep characterization of the characters from an emotional/sentimental perspective. 'Novel of escapism' as I was wisely told about a world, however, as real as ever. Both in its beauty and its values.
'Film on a novel of escapism' is my definition, then. Yet capable of transmitting a thrill.
"The geisha is an artist of the floating world, sings, dances, entertains you; everything you want, the rest is shadow, the rest is secret."
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