The movie tries to be too many things. It’s billed as an epic and in doing so tries to cater to too many people and ideas. Besides the fact that it weighs in at just under three hours it’s almost two movies with two different stories in one. One almost gets the impression that Baz Luhrmann, the director and writer, was trying to pay homage to Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, Out of Africa, and Spaghetti Westerns.

It starts out as a fantasy with an over-the-top aristocratic English woman and the Aussie Drover. She is quickly thrown into what seems like barbaric situations to her as there are pub brawls, a bumbling drunk, a stereotyped bad guy, and a few shots of wildlife and scenery. Most of the shots of the Australian outback are beautiful and work very well on their own but simply don’t mesh together thematically or stylistically. Luhrmann quickly sets the stage for the theme of oppression of the aborginals and introduces the two vital characters to the movie: young Nullah and his grandfather the mystic King George. The movie then morphs as a team of unlikely heroes attempt to drove a large herd of cattle to Drawin in order to fulfill an army contract that is critical. It’s Silverado meets The Man from Snowy River.

At this point the movie could have ended but instead is only a fraction of the way through as it continues morph again and again between a cliched Spaghetti Western and a serious or mystical drama about the oppression of the aboriginal culture. At every point where the movie could have ended — and there were quite a few — it changes gears. Its changing point of views is jarring at times.

The characters are mainly flat and predictable. Hugh Jackman plays the character who is so flat he is coincidentally called by his occupation, “Drover.” The all-knowing and ever-present mystical aboriginal character King George plays straight out of The Lion King as he has magic fires looking down from the mountain. Nicole Kidman plays the lady opposite to Jackman who begins the movie as an English aristochrat but soon warms to the anti-social Drover and falls for him.

I would recommend seeing the movie for its representation of Australia and the aborginal community, not for its storyline. Its melodramatic, inconsistent, and — at times even ridiculous — one dimensional plot are a definite pass. It could have been better had it followed the golden rule of less is more.

Some more interesting movies on Australian heritage and culture are Picnic at Hanging Rock, Breaker Morant and Gallipolli.

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1. Memoirs of A Geisha

何てばかげた映画なんだろう、「メモワーズ・オブ・ア・ゲイシャ」。

Okay, my biggest grip about this move: just about all of the actors are Chinese! Are there no talented actors/actresses in Japan that could have been cast as geisha?? Of course not, obviously by this movie.

The movie takes place in Japan (actually mostly filmed in California). Everybody spoke English in the movie. Although, to add a sense of “real Japan,” random characters at seemingly random and non-important times would blurt out something in Japanese for no reason. Without any subtitles, though, this is lost on the American audience because sometimes they would say something important. For example, Sayuri calls Mameha throughout the movie “onee-chan” (sister). It’s important in the storyline development to realize that Sayuri is calling Mameha sister but unless you’re familiar with Japanese, you have no clue what Sayuri’s calling her. At another time Mother tells Chiyo that it’s cold in her room, “Close the window, hayaku hayaku (hurry up)!” In neither of these two examples does throwing in Japanese add anything. Oh, and nearly everybody speaks with a very thick Chinese accent, their Japanese, too, was with an accent.
This story was originally a book of the same title written by Arthur Golden. If you’ve read the book, you’re going to be sorely disappointed at the Hollywood translation; if you haven’t read the book, you’re going to be lost. The story is told so quickly and without any details as to why certain things are important to the geisha that you don’t have a reason to connect with any of the characters or their problems. In the theater, I heard many people laugh throughout the movie at unfunny moments. Entirely too much of the story from the book was glossed over and the bits and pieces that were used for the movie were entirely bland.
The movie was pretty to look at, nothing even close to “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” or “House of Flying Daggers” or “Hero.” This movie is what you get when you take an American director and tell him to make something “Asian-like:” all wrong.

公式サイト：http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/memoirsofageisha/

「SAYURI」オフィシャルサイト：http://www.movies.co.jp/sayuri/

The actors are hamstrung from the very beginning by the Westernized material — everyone speaks English at all times — and by the bland direction from Rob Marshall.

Jeffrey M. Anderson

…the world of the film is so narrow that pre-occupation Japan looks like a feudal Disneyland, where everybody knew their place and the cherry blossoms were always falling…”

Chris Barsanti

In essence Chicago comes closer to capturing that life of artists and performance; Memoirs is just whoring for a little prestige known as the Oscars.

Erik Childress

An Eastern movie made to resemble the most unchallenging Western ideal of what the East is.

Jeffrey Chen

Related posts:

1. Reading Fun
2. 最初の日本語本
3. Legend of the Seeker