Set in a mysterious and exotic world which still casts a potent spell today, the story begins in the years before World War II, when a Japanese child is torn from her penniless family to work as a servant in a geisha house. Despite a treacherous rival who nearly breaks her spirit, the girl blossoms into the legendary geisha Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang). Beautiful and accomplished, Sayuri captivates the most powerful men of her day, but is haunted by her secret love for the one man (Ken Watanabe) who is out of her reach.

Based on the internationally acclaimed novel by Arthur Golden.

Memoirs of a Geisha is liking taking a look through a peep hole into a world so much larger and more fantastic and beautiful than you could ever imagine. The world of the Geisha is not our world, it was a world of beauty and grace and things finer than we could wish or pay for. It was a world of music and dance and refinement, not the cheap parlor tricks that many were led to after the fall of Japan and the American occupation post World War II. The movie is also a fantastic tale about how a lone girl through determination and spirit changed those around her and made her own predicament better. It is hard not to fall in love with the world that the Geisha belonged to and its hard to not fall in love about the telling of the most famous of their kind. The movie mingles in all the elements of a good drama from the conflict and the cat fighting amongst the geisha to clinging to love that can never be had. The path of the geisha was a lonely one, forbidden to love, they were slaves to their trade and even after making their fortunes they were not able to break the chains that have bound them so long. I was entranced by the story, I was breathless by the beauty of the movie as the scenes and cinematography were nothing less than gorgeous and I was moved by the haunting music that intertwined it all together. The movie will take your breath away and entertain you all at the same time.

We haven’t seen much of Ziyi Zhang yet but everything I have seen her in makes me believer she is a fantastic actress. From Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to House of Flying Daggers and now to Memoirs of a Geisha all her characters have been different yet entirely memorable. She is a geisha, she is a female warrior she is whoever she is suppose to be portraying in the movie and that is always what you want out of actor. I also have been impressed with Ken Wannabe whom captures the screen as one of the few male roles in the movie. This movie is about the geisha as we see them grow and learn and fight with each other to be the best and to be independent, so Ken as a nice male role to a film driven entirely by woman. Not to be forgotten is Suzuka Ohgo who plays the young Sayuri and who is forced to carry much of the earlier parts of the film. The movie made me want to read the book and that to me is a big compliment to any movie based on a book as it says you want to know more about the film and immerse yourself once more in its story. The movie is beautiful and worth seeing.
4 stars out of 5