Hannari: Geisha Modern is a documentary that I truly wanted to like. After all, it was both the production of the 2005 Memoirs of a Geisha and the 2002 The Last Samurai that inspired first-time documentary filmmaker Miyuki Sohara to make this film.
Sohara who had a small part in the Tom Cruise flick as a geisha, was, according to the production notes for this documentary, "disappointed to learn that the producers of Memoirs of a Geisha had no interest in faithfully reproducing the artistic elements of the geisha culture, such as their dance."
Like her, I was disappointed with the Cruise flick which I saw and the snippets of Memoirs of a Geisha which I have not seen. I had read the book and that was quite enough. The trailers for Memoirs of a Geisha inspired me to write an open letter to Steven Spielberg.
For those who don't know, originally the studio people responsible for the opening party of The Last Samuraisent an infamous email to a local college asking for young, attractive Asian women to dress up and be party favors or eye candy. No pay involved as well as no Asian men required. That email made the rounds nationwide and the studio quickly backtracked.
Later, when Memoirs of a Geisha came out as a movie, the book and the movie seemed to indicate how little Asian and Asian women had really progressed, even after the successful Joy Luck Club--both 1989 book and 1993 movie.
Golden's novel followed a woman and her experiences prior to World War II, an explosive period in both Japanese history and the history of the United States in terms of societal change and racism and sexism. Golden, like Sohara, focuses on Kyoto geisha, but Sohara's documentary concentrates on modern geisha as the title implies.
Beginning in 2005, Sohara, a TV announcer and radio DJ and sometime actor, spent three months interviewing and filming geisha in the Gion district. This was, notably, after Mineko Iwasaki had filed a lawsuit against Arthur Golden regarding his 1997 novel Memoirs of a Geisha in 2001. Iwasaki, who does not read English, did read the Japanese edition.
Sohara doesn't answer any questions that The Last Samurai and both the book and the film of Memoirs of a Geisha broached. Instead, Hannari: Geisha Modern occupies a curious space beyond and apart from recent history, insulating itself from both Sohara's original catalyst and the world at large, both Japan insiders and the people who are willing to believe in the geisha fantasy.
Some of the cinematography shows her inexperience. The lighting is wrong and the colors are off--typical of photography or filming inside where the lighting is too yellow and goes uncorrected by film or filters.
Sohara had access to the geisha community that hasn't been granted before, but the vital missing ingredient is the critical eye and view. We are told why a dance instructor believes that many women do not make it to the apprentice maiko stage but we don't hear from those that quit.
We learn that where geiko (as geisha prefer to be called) used number in the thousands and now only 300 currently work in Kyoto. Originally, most of the geiko came from the Kyoto area, but now many come from outside and other areas of Japan. We don't hear why Kyoto women reject that lifestyle, we only hear why women have decided to train. We don't hear how the families of these women consider this choice. What do their parents think? What do their siblings, particularly other sisters think?
Moreover, we never hear from Mineko Iwasaki, the woman who sued Arthur Golden and his publisher and went on to write her own book, Geisha: A Life, in 2002. We also do not hear what those interviewed think about Golden, Iwasaki or either book. Iwasaki reported quit early in her career because of her frustration with the traditional system.
If Hollywood's damningly mistaken portrayal of the geiko was the impetus for this documentary, then it is equally odd that we never hear what anyone thinks about big budget Hollywood portrayals, even though two of the women interviewed were in the 1957 movie Sayonara. All we have are these two women recalling they sat near a young and virile Marlon Brando and wondering if Miyoshi Umeki won an Oscar for her role as the ill-fated wife of an American airman played by Red Buttons.
For the record, that movie won Buttons and Umeki supporting actors Oscars. Brando was nominated for Best Actor despite his odd Southern accent. Also notable is Ricardo Montablan playing a Japanese named Nakamura. What did the Japanese think of that?
Brando had played a Japanese Okinawan in the 1956 movie The Teahouse of the August Moon. Surely if everyone is a critic a few critics of that performance could be found in Japan.
These connections aren't followed up by Sohara, making the resulting conversations trite. Big names are dropped but related hard issues are not picked up. One of the more famous geiko of yesteryear is also brought up, Yuki Kato Morgan (1881-1963), but the social issues surrounding her are not.
Supposedly, both the Morgan family and the Kato family disapproved of the match between the young geiko and George Morgan, nephew of J.P. Morgan. Yuki and George Morgan were not welcomed in the United States despite the Morgan family money. They settled in France. Morgan died 10 years later in 1914. Yuki returned to Japan in 1938.
According to a December 1947 article from the Time magazine archives, while most English news sources called her a famous geiko, in a fictionalized account of her life and romance run in 260 installments in three Japanese newspapers, she was depicted as a second-class geiko who accepted Morgan's proposal only after her Japanese lover married someone else. Morgan bought her from the teahouse for what amounted to $20,000 at that time.
Yuki refused to see the book's author and did not read the accounts. Surely, since Sohara had access to the Kato family, there was some issues--social prejudice in Japan and the U.S. and sensationalization of geiko on both sides--that could have been explored but were not.
Because of this non-critical feel-good supportive stance of the movie, it feels more like a travel guide than a documentary. As the former, Sohara succeeds. As the later, one can only sigh and consider so many missed opportunities.
In Japanese with English narration and subtitles.
On the prowl in this locale since 22 June 2008:
27 June 2008
MOVIE REVIEW: Between Love and Survival is Live and Become
What would you do to survive? Some men have pragmatically resorted to cannibalism and others have betrayed their humanity in desperation. Somewhere there exists a twilight, a gray area where lies and theft can be deemed justified. In this murky territory lofty intellectual questions of belief and personal identity can be raised. More often the question has been: Is it OK to pretend to be Christian rather than Jewish, Catholic or whatever, in order to live an easier life? Here the question is: Is it acceptable to pretend one is Jewish to survive?
In director Radu Mihaileanu's 2005 provocative though sentimental movie Va, Vis et Deviens, an Ethiopian Christian mother (Meskie Shibru Sivan) orders her son to pretend he is Jewish in order to be rescued by a covert Israeli-sponsored mission called Operation Moses. They are in a Sudanese refugee camp in 1984, surrounded by death and dust. They had to walk miles to get there, leaving everything behind. He is replacing a boy who has just died, adopted by the grief-stricken Jewish mother, Hana (Mimi Abonesh Kebede).
Called Live and Become in English, this movie deals with the gray areas personal integrity--of personal identity and love. The boy who becomes Shlomo (played by Moshe Agazai, Moshe Abebe and lastly by Sirak M. Sabahat) is taught his new history and told to forget his own. He's too young to fathom why his real mother ordered him to leave and too soon, his adoptive mother also dies. Losing two mothers, he becomes a problem child.
Yet he's not the only orphan and eventually, he's adopted by a socially responsible French Israeli couple, Yael (Yael Abecassis) and Yoram (Roschdy Zem), who already have two children.
Being Jewish in Israel shouldn't be a problem yet Shlomo is very black. His color and the color of real Falasha, Ethiopian Jews, becomes a social issue and one that his adoptive mother and father bravely confront while he more passively endures.
Secretly, he finds a way to send letters to his real mother, asking an Ethiopian rabbi Qes Amhra (Yitzhak Edgar) to write letters in Amharic, his native language.
As a teenager, he falls in love with Sarah (Roni Hadar) whose father disapproves of the match so much that no one in Sarah's family attends the wedding. Shlomo's fear of being discovered and his desire to reveal the truth and yet keep this new family and this safety guaranteed by his false heritage provide the suspense and moral core of this movie.
Written by Mihaileanu with Alain-Michel Blanc, this imperfect movie tries to be both a formulaic movie fairy tale with a happy ending and a social message movie. It doesn't always work, but the characters are so engaging and the themes so universal you want it to work. Who hasn't been tempted to pretend one is something one is not to get though an uneasy situation?
Remy Chevin's cinematography doesn't always light the darker face of the actor playing Shlomo when juxtaposed to a lighter face and this aspect doesn't seem to have a message there. Moreover, almost too much territory is covered in Shlomo's adult life, making for a choppiness that is at odds with the more solemn pace of the first half.
Hadar glows with a rush of enthusiasm and boundless energy in contrast to Sabahat's portrayal of the adult Shlomo as an outsider, often watching and observing himself because his secret is so great it threatens to destroy everything in his world.
The ending is, perhaps, too sentimental, but forgivable. This movie has touched the hearts of many. It won Cesar Awards in 2006 for Best Original Screenplay, an Audience Award at the 1005 Vancouver International Film Festival, a 2006 World Audience Award at the Lumiere Awards in France and 2005 Label Europa Cinemas, Panorama Audience Award and Prise of the Ecumenical Jury Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Sometimes one does go to a movie to see a fate happier than reality and yet when a movie can do that and make you care about its characters while learning about a bit of history and social injustice, isn't it a little gem, no matter how rough, that should be considered precious?
In Amharic, Hebrew and French.
In director Radu Mihaileanu's 2005 provocative though sentimental movie Va, Vis et Deviens, an Ethiopian Christian mother (Meskie Shibru Sivan) orders her son to pretend he is Jewish in order to be rescued by a covert Israeli-sponsored mission called Operation Moses. They are in a Sudanese refugee camp in 1984, surrounded by death and dust. They had to walk miles to get there, leaving everything behind. He is replacing a boy who has just died, adopted by the grief-stricken Jewish mother, Hana (Mimi Abonesh Kebede).
Called Live and Become in English, this movie deals with the gray areas personal integrity--of personal identity and love. The boy who becomes Shlomo (played by Moshe Agazai, Moshe Abebe and lastly by Sirak M. Sabahat) is taught his new history and told to forget his own. He's too young to fathom why his real mother ordered him to leave and too soon, his adoptive mother also dies. Losing two mothers, he becomes a problem child.
Yet he's not the only orphan and eventually, he's adopted by a socially responsible French Israeli couple, Yael (Yael Abecassis) and Yoram (Roschdy Zem), who already have two children.
Being Jewish in Israel shouldn't be a problem yet Shlomo is very black. His color and the color of real Falasha, Ethiopian Jews, becomes a social issue and one that his adoptive mother and father bravely confront while he more passively endures.
Secretly, he finds a way to send letters to his real mother, asking an Ethiopian rabbi Qes Amhra (Yitzhak Edgar) to write letters in Amharic, his native language.
As a teenager, he falls in love with Sarah (Roni Hadar) whose father disapproves of the match so much that no one in Sarah's family attends the wedding. Shlomo's fear of being discovered and his desire to reveal the truth and yet keep this new family and this safety guaranteed by his false heritage provide the suspense and moral core of this movie.
Written by Mihaileanu with Alain-Michel Blanc, this imperfect movie tries to be both a formulaic movie fairy tale with a happy ending and a social message movie. It doesn't always work, but the characters are so engaging and the themes so universal you want it to work. Who hasn't been tempted to pretend one is something one is not to get though an uneasy situation?
Remy Chevin's cinematography doesn't always light the darker face of the actor playing Shlomo when juxtaposed to a lighter face and this aspect doesn't seem to have a message there. Moreover, almost too much territory is covered in Shlomo's adult life, making for a choppiness that is at odds with the more solemn pace of the first half.
Hadar glows with a rush of enthusiasm and boundless energy in contrast to Sabahat's portrayal of the adult Shlomo as an outsider, often watching and observing himself because his secret is so great it threatens to destroy everything in his world.
The ending is, perhaps, too sentimental, but forgivable. This movie has touched the hearts of many. It won Cesar Awards in 2006 for Best Original Screenplay, an Audience Award at the 1005 Vancouver International Film Festival, a 2006 World Audience Award at the Lumiere Awards in France and 2005 Label Europa Cinemas, Panorama Audience Award and Prise of the Ecumenical Jury Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Sometimes one does go to a movie to see a fate happier than reality and yet when a movie can do that and make you care about its characters while learning about a bit of history and social injustice, isn't it a little gem, no matter how rough, that should be considered precious?
In Amharic, Hebrew and French.
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