1st Movie Critique: Memoirs of a Geisha

Movie: Memoirs of a Geisha In this movie, two daughters of a father in debt are sold to a man as a part of human trafficking. Girl named Sayuri is later sold to a Geisha house and become “Kyoto’s premier geisha” as described in lilcharts.com. She learns to develop artistic skills and how to represent her body to important politic male figures whenever she is called. One day Sayuri encounters with a man who acts kindly towards her in her teen age. Later in the movie Sayuri is reunites with the man in different occasions of Geisha workplaces such as dinner meetings. After WW2 hits every village and any sector, and Geisha sector is simply over too. One day after long time working while work as a village girl, Sayuri is called to “duty” by the request of the same man who needs her work in political meetings more than her love for himself even though he acts as he is romantically interested in her throughout the movie. Afterwards, Sayuri accepts the job and immediate after she reveals in her Geisha outfit in the presence of the man, he approaches her, and they reunite by a passionate kiss.

In this movie Japanese people are represented as people who either are oppressed people or cruel people throughout the movie. There was literally no character who represents the wisdom, optimism, bravery, integrity without combined with the oppressed character features. Even the strongest woman character in the movie Mameha, very powerful Geisha of older generation, is represented as someone who is left alone and traumatized by the Baron and the abortions she is forced to have by the Baron. So, there is non-stop drama all the way throughout the movie. Japanese women are represented as mainly oppressed woman who fights over strong man or chasing money to find security and respect in life by making the man around them content. They always have to resort to unethical means because they have to. Besides that, all the man are either drunk and abusers or passive aggressive man who has “no guts” to do the right thing. Whole movie is “an overly stylized Far Eastern fantasy” as criticized in the the Beyaz Perde which is Turkey based movie criticism platform. I believe that with the great quality of props, costumes and music that creates a very engaging atmosphere for the audience which leads to missing out on clearly seeing how the whole story is actually revolving around a fantasy based on a deeply wounded and traumatized girl’s natural and childish admiration and need for a father figure which is represented as very sophisticated love of a lifetime in the movie. This man acts as he is interested in Sayuri, but still calls her to duty as Geisha by waiting her to present her body and artistic skills to make other political partners happy. He leaves her to his business partner to have her as her personal Geisha. However, he gets upset to see her with other man and passionately kisses her in the end of the movie too. This much older man simply takes advantage of her under the cover of caring and strong chairman and businessman character. This whole picture of pathologic relationship is romanticized and dramatized to all extend. Additionally, Japanese people are portrayed by Chinese actors, and it causes no problem for people who cannot separate Asian people from one another. But normally such distinction is very important to maintain since all Asian people have different looks. Since this is a Hollywood movie, this kind of orientalist attitude is strongly immersed in every corner of the movie. It was immensely painful to watch. I only continued to be able to finalize my critique. These sorts of soap opera melodrama movies are combined with a worth mentioning sweetened up pedophilia which almost turned into a pop culture under another cover of orientalists and traditional fantasies. Such films basically fuel the phenomenon of pedophilia, the perception of "the bad woman who seduces a man to earn a living" and is a disgrace and insult to all the women and indigenous peoples of Japan who reject such pathological representations.