I’m still not quite sure how I felt about this movie, but I enjoyed it. I probably won’t see it again though, and I don’t know if I would recommend it to anyone to see in the theatre. If you see it, rent it.

I’m still not quite sure how I felt about this movie, but I enjoyed it. I probably won’t see it again though, and I don’t know if I would recommend it to anyone to see in the theatre. If you see it, rent it.

It’s challenging to translate a complex story into a two-hour movie. The cinematography in this film was lovely, the acting was good and the film moved along well, kept me interested. But if I hadn’t read the book, I wouldn’t have really understood what was going on.

Inferior to the book.
The movie was well cast. The cinematography was wonderful. But as Olivia said, it is dumbed down. The thrust of it becomes this vague love story (as most love stories on film are) that minimizes the harsh realities of geisha life as depicted in the novel. Oh well, I can check this off the list now.

I was disappointed in the movie in a lot of ways, but it is still worth watching. One of the things that bothered me was the English. Not so much the fact that they were speaking English, but there were bits of it in Japanese. It made it make even less sense for them to be speaking English when you would hear the bits of Japanese. The short beginning in the crooked house is in Japanese, but then suddenly in the bigger city everyone speaks English? They would still throw in an arigato here and a konichiwa there to make it still sound sorta Japanese and it bugged me.

I was disappointed that the Geisha training sequence was reduced to mainly a montage. It was one of the most interesting parts of the book. A lot of the aspects of what Geisha is were still left a little unclear. I found myself having to explain a lot of things to the person I was watching with who was not as familiar with the subject matter.

After all that and some other nitpicks, I still think it is worth watching once. Michelle Yeoh and Gong Li are always nice to watch. It’s also a very pretty movie visually.

The book was much more satisfying for me. At first I was really excited to watch the movie but after watching it I felt it lacked too much of what the book offered. It’s hard to describe if you didn’t read the book but I felt the book satisfied my senses much more than what the movie could offer.

arthur golden’s book is a pivotal one for me. It has launched me to my quest for everything about geisha. it is an interesting and highly fascinating culture. needless to say the book is phenomenal for me.

thus i cant wait for the film to be shown here in manila.

... this is a nice film. One to tug on the heartstrings, and to transport you to another time and world.

What it is not, however, is (a) as good as the book, (b) half the story the book is.

MoaG the book had me enthralled at the indepth telling of how little Chio was shaped and moulded into the Geisha Sayuri. The vividness of the paint all but leapt from the page. True, the final third disappointed me by introducing a semblance of plot which was far less cleverly done.

MoaG the film crams all the details, all the pictures painted by words of how a Geisha comes to be, and crammed it into a little montage in the middle of a film otherwise intent on telling a love story. It’s a nice love story, it’s a pretty film, but it can’t be judged highly compared to the book. As is ever so, I suppose!

seen it. liked it. but I think I’m going to like the novel ver. better (cause’ Hollywood usually produces subpar book-to-film translations; eg: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings) but that’s just my opinion.

Hollywood has dumbed this story down for audiences and is marketing this movie as a “love story”, which it is not. I was quite disapointed where the movie left off but won’t spoil it for those who have not seen it yet.
However, I still rate it worth seeing, if only on DVD.
Also, read the book…it is very good.