The Hindu Business Line : An insight into the life of a geisha

Memoirs Of A Geisha is beyond the moral debate of being a geisha; it is about being one. Once you accept that as premise for the film and settle into its folds, it unravels as all good stories do, totally uncluttered, travelling straight from beginning to close like an arrow seeking to tell. Trifle long for a Hollywood film, somewhere in the second half, it falters in pace as the typical Asian cobweb, replete with hidden motives, sacrifice of love - all force their way onto the geisha's clientele, burdening her clear story with a tedious plot.

But only for a brief while, as Rob Marshall's film is a rich experience; true to the book, save a major jump in time towards the end and elimination of the final chapters of Arthur Golden's work. The novel is near 500-pages long. The film has compressed much of that into a tight two-and-quarter hours, sensitively portraying the arrival of a little girl to the `okiya' (place where geishas live), her feeling of profound loss at being separated from her sister (who, being less beautiful is sent off to the red light district), her rivalry with the okiya's resident beauty queen, the coldness of sheer beauty and its inability to sustain male patronage, the prudence of loving a patron and not any lover, the training of a geisha, the pivotal value of one man's kindness to a child separated from family and how that single encounter focuses the life of that blossoming beauty to being a geisha and somehow meet him again.

With references on how to impress men, powerful men seeking the geisha's company, competitive bidding for the chance to sleep with a virgin geisha and geishas remembered by the price they commanded on such a `mizuage' night — the story reeks of male chauvinism. The Oriental weakness for male worship and Japanese society's highly evolved sense of aesthetics ("to be a geisha is to be judged as a moving work of art'') also make the geisha system look righteous and acceptable. For many, geisha is trained elegance visited for a price, which is why the ability of the story and the film to keep Sayuri's life — as indeed that of all other geishas portrayed — human, is a fantastic achievement.

In time, beauty ages and a geisha becomes history.

ll that survives are memories of a face that was; and if you look deeper, a person who had been, albeit unseen.

With a story that starts in the fishing village of Yoroido from where nine-year- old Chiyu is brought to Kyoto, her futile attempts at escape, to her life as geisha at the okiya in Gion and her devotion to the man she loves — the film succeeds in keeping Sayuri a person, safe from the expensive dressed up doll famed for her mizuage price she would otherwise have been. Safe from being another Hatsumomo — the okiya's reigning beauty queen — who fades, having lost the battle to find an anchor despite her beautiful face. As Sayuri notes of the geisha walking away from the okiya, "I might be looking into my own future.''

Memoirs Of A Geisha was recently nominated for six Oscars. In retrospect, it does appear a bit strange that none of that included a nomination for acting. Besides the convincing portrayal of the key characters, the other thought, which one took back from the theatre, was that of an Asian cast pulling off a great film; restrained acting and a touch of the dramatic only where it matters, appear to have done the trick.

Suzuka Ohgo is unforgettable as Chiyu. Ziyi Zhang as Sayuri, Gong Li as Hatsumomo, Michelle Yeoh as Mameha (the geisha who mentors Sayuri) and Ken Watanabe as Chairman (the man Sayuri loves), all have turned in fine performances.

The film releases here on February 24. See it.