Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Devran ikiz Before starting my review, I would like to write a little bit about the term Geisha, who are they, and what they do. So, a Geisha is woman who is trained to entertain men with conversations, dances, songs and musical instruments. Even maybe under different names, Geisha were an important part of Japanese culture. Even though it is mentioned a lot times in the film, Geisha are not prostitutes, but highly trained and educated, beautiful women that exist for nothing but the pleasures of men. Similar women with similar purposes can also be seen in the Ottoman culture. They are taken from their homelands at the early age, sold to the palace, or for Japanese, to the pleasure house, and trained to entertain men. For Ottomans, they were trained in Harem only for the Sultan. This is one of the similarities between Turkish and Japanese cultures. Geisha wear the best traditional Japanese clothes, Kimono, and they are invited to special occasions and events to entertain special guests. They also sell their virginity to the highest bidder and become a real Geisha, I am not sure about accuracy of the last information, but this is how it was in the film. Based on the novel with the same name by Arthur Golden, "Memoirs of a Geisha" was released on December 9, 2005 in the United States. It is directed by Rob Marshall who is also known to be the director of 13 Oscar-Nominated film Chicago (won 6 of them). "Memoirs of a Geisha" was produced by Steven Spielberg, nominated for six Academy Awards and won three of them, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design. When you look at the categories in which "Memoirs of a Geisha" has won the awards, you can relate to its mystic story, artistic setup, foggy atmosphere and diverse camera angles.I have mixed feeling when it comes to this film. I am not really sure if I like it or not. There are good points and bad points in the means of story, atmosphere, casting and performances. The biggest mistake of the film is casting a Chinese Actress for the role of the Geisha, who is in the leading role of the film. She wears blue lenses just to create an impression of a blue-eyed Japanese woman, but everyone can see that those are not her real eyes. I wish they would have casted a Japanese woman with a natural beauty.I am not going to get into details, but I didn't like how Japanese men and women are presented in the film and how Japan is represented as a nation. I asked myself the question; Geisha are trained all their life, and choose this as a life style for this kind of men? This also shows the social status of Japanese women. Even today, when you look at the Japanese culture, you can barely see women in higher positions in the society. All this comes down to their history and traditions. In this point of view, "Memoirs of a Geisha" is a very good example to understand modern Japan. Also, don't forget the fact that this is film is made by the Americans, and we know how they are willing to mislead the truth for their own benefits. Here, however, this is not the case because I have studied Japanese language and culture and I can vouch for the reality of this film.Getting back to film, I have enjoyed the environment very much. The atmosphere makes you live in that era. Houses that are very close to each other, Sakura trees, narrow roads and transportation harmonize you with the mood of the film. "Memoirs of a Geisha" is a very realistic drama film. I mean, you really find yourself involved in the story. Two little girls are sold to a pleasure house and separated from each other. The one, whose memoirs we are watching, slowly reveals the real meaning of Geisha and its sacrifices. How she is used as a tool for the benefits of the men she used to entertain and love. After all, no matter how it is told in the film, Geisha are not really what they are presented to be. Soundtracks have a great influence in the story and its atmosphere. I have always found Japanese culture, traditions and history very peaceful, but this film made me question this a little bit. Even though what is told in the story may not be true, this is what I expect from a film. I would recommend this film for the people who are interested in Japanese life style. Also, this is a good source to see and feel the different, the sad face of Japan.

eclaire-68264 Memoirs of a Geisha is a very good movie in my opinion. It first starts off in the countryside of Japan, where a family of four ( two sisters , a mother and a father ) is living in poverty and their mom is very sick . The only way she can get the help she needs is by selling her two daughters to the geisha house to become geisha. When they are sent off to their new place , the older sister is decided by the headmaster to live at a whorehouse to become a prostitute and the younger sister Chiyo who is later given a different name (Sayuri) is kept in the geisha house and must serve in a hierarchy in the household . The movie is full of pain and hardships and Sayuri must learn how to become a geisha and sell herself to the highest bidder. The movie is full of drama and suspense. She has to fight her way through the jealous ness and competitiveness of the other maiko or girls practicing to become geisha in order to become an amazing geisha and work with men or clientele. She falls with a stranger named the chairman who was the only one who showed her kindness when she was little. After she grows up and is the world's most famous and popular geisha she struggles to have a relationship with him and then world war 2 disturbs the peace in Japan and every single geisha and her have to put their profession at rest to stay sheltered . After the war is over Japan has changed and geisha aren't as special as they once were . At the end Sayuri and the chairman fall in love and stay with each other till the end. It's a tragic love story with astronomical boundaries . It's something you can just sit back and watch on a rainy day and admire . It's a very heartfelt movie that you can watch over and over again , and cry over and over again. This is a great movie and I highly recommend it.

Semisonic Is something good just because it looks nice on the surface? Is something normal just because nobody protests against it? And should you give a damn and intervene if it doesn't affect you directly?The far-away foreign lands were unknown and full of mysteries once. I'm a part of the Western civilization, and the Oriental realm of Japan seems like a terra incognita to me even in the XXI century, let alone what it was almost a hundred years ago. And Memoirs of a Geisha is a story shedding light on the secret world of the pre-war Japan. A story of a young fisherman's daughter sold to a geisha house.The intricate cultural details are deep and captivating. The old buildings and pavements catch your attention, the old costumes make you wonder about what could be a reason behind inventing something so complex. All these enigmas wrapped in mysteries leave you a breathless observer on this mesmerizing spectacle called a life of a geisha. And it's very tempting to resort to admiring this unparalleled complexity and to think that a culture so diverse and rich simply couldn't beget anything bad or wrong. Especially when we're constantly reminded of how important it is to follow the ancient traditions. The wise ancestors can't be wrong, can they?This overly romanticized story tries its best to present Chiyo, a common girl turned the most exquisite geisha in Miyako, as some sort of Japanese Cinderella. And so that we don't get lost in translation but still get a taste of the foreign flavor, the actors use an awkward mix of English and Japanese. All to make us believe that what we saw was basically a fairy tale, or a success story at least. That is, that Sayuri is the best thing that could have happened to Chiyo.But why can't I shake off the sense of utter ugliness about this whole film, as if someone decided to dress corpses in fancy clothes and play house with them? Maybe because, despite the excess of sweet delicacy, Memoirs of a Geisha is still a story of a person whose life is broken from the very start, who's forced to cast away everything she ever was or hoped to become, and turn into a slave of the cruel system where men are everything and women are nothing more than painted dolls for their entertainment.It's hard to blame the film for it, for it's not the writer's or director's fault that the Japanese society was so bitterly harsh and cruel towards women. And it's certainly no surprise, since a nation that puts a code of honor, distorted and predisposed towards torture and death, above lives of its own people, can hardly be an example of humanity.But one can feel an almost visceral disgust over the fact that the film openly worships the visual aesthetics of the geisha phenomenon, turning a human life into a show we all are offered to watch if we pay a certain cost. But to blunt our own conscience and make this human circus watchable, we're given a bunch of narrations telling us how a girl should be happy about being a geisha, and how she is happy about the idea of becoming a mistress of a man who simply gave her a sweet treat when she was a child. That less cruelty and exploitation is already a virtue because it could've been so much worse...The world of today has lost the boundaries of the past, and the cultures once confined within the nations bearing them are now for everyone to observe. Some things we eagerly assimilate, some things are just too strange and uncommon to accept, yet are intriguing enough to spectate at. And maybe it's indeed none of my business to judge, but my sense of good and evil refuses to enjoy that cult of human sacrifices, no matter how much silk and paint is used to make it pretty. So maybe it's a good thing that Japan lost that war 70 years ago. And not just so the Western women don't have to please men like geishas, but also because a pretty unfreedom is still unfreedom, even if everyone calls it happiness.

rajatdahiyax Memoirs of a Geisha is a 2005 American epic film adaptation of the novel of the same name, produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and Spyglass Entertainment and by Douglas Wick's Red Wagon Productions. The picture was directed by Rob Marshall and was released in the United States on December 9, 2005 by Columbia Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures. It stars Zhang Ziyi, Ken Watanabe, Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh, Youki Kudoh, and Suzuka Ohgo. Production took place in southern and northern California and in several locations in Kyoto, including the Kiyomizu temple and the Fushimi Inari shrine.In the years before World War II, a Japanese child is torn from her penniless family to work as a maid in a geisha house. Despite a treacherous rival who nearly breaks her spirit, the girl blossoms into the legendary geisha Sayuri. Beautiful and accomplished, Sayuri captivates the most powerful men of her day, but is haunted by her secret love for the one man who is out of her reach.