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I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

As a Chinese, I don't know anyting about Geisha, maybe there's plenty of mistakes in this film, but I appreciate it all the same.For me, film is film, it's not a textbook, I don't care those things.In 2005,when I just graduated from my university,I don't undersand why Zhang ZIyi and other two actress join this film, I hate Japanese that time,now, I can see things more rationally. d

I read a beautiful novel. Granted, I do not know much about Japanese culture, but the book was filled with information and subtlety that made me feel as though I did. The impression I felt was one of stifled hope under a beautiful mask that finally was able to burst through during the final pages. I cried.Then, I watched the movie, hopeful that it would be the embodiment of all of the emotion that the book had evoked from me. I normally have lower expectations of movie adaptations of books I have read because I understand that it is impossible to fit in every event and detail, but this film, for me, fell short.The beginning of the film was done incorrectly. The story of Sayuri being ripped from her family and subsequently throwing fits and crying was not true to the story and took away a piece of her character. When I read, I was struck by the fact that Sayuri didn't show much emotion more than silent crying and took that to be a cultural response. Sayuri being loud and throwing fits mischaracterized her.Hatsumomo was miscast, and Mameha was not done quite right. The character of Hatsumomo seemed too loud as I imagined her with a kind of quiet cruelty. Mameha was such an important character that I didn't feel she was given enough time or credit for all that she taught and gave to Sayuri. I wanted to see more of them entertaining as geisha. What a night for them would be like. Also, in the book, Mameha clearly plots directly against Hatsumomo, which, to me, was another important detail.The moment in which she meets the Chairman was not nearly as beautiful or heavily emphasized as it should have been. This was the moment when Sayuri was lost and without life direction and then decided to tether all of her hopes and dreams on this one man. Ken Watanabe was perfectly cast, but their meeting was too abrupt and insignificant. Nobu's character wasn't developed nearly enough. It was never truly explained how much he cared for her or the true reason why Sayuri did not want him as a patron. He was also supposed to be more disfigured. I missed this detail, not for the shock factor, but because it is what makes everyone pity him and what helps drive the Chairman to keeping himself away. I feel cheated because the most pivotal scene was changed. Sayuri should never have thrown the Chairman's handkerchief to the wind. She would have kept it always and never parted it with it for anything. She should have laid it in front of the Chairman as he spoke so that he would know that she loved him, too. Then end just wasn't right. The progression of the film was beautiful. I love the score, and I particularly love the scene in which she transforms into a geisha. The scene in which Sayuri danced was absolute heaven. Visually, the movie did many things right. Content-wise, it was a miss for me.

Two sisters sold into two separate Geisha houses - attempt to flee - While the older sister gets away - The younger sister has to stay - Not only that, her chance at becoming a Geisha is taken from her due to the wicked schemes of an older Geisha who lives in the same house and a heavy debt that she cannot pay - forced to be a servant, she goes about life with no hope - Until she meets the Chairman - A much older man who shows her the first glimpse of kindness she has ever known - Making a promise to herself she decides she wants to someday marry him - When a rival shows up at their Geisha house years later - she decides to take the young woman, who once was the young girl, into her Geisha home to become a Geisha - What takes others years, she must learn in months - While hoping to one day be in the Chairman's arms. The rest you will have to see for yourself - The Cinematography is mind blowing - and it takes you to a place you may have never dreamed or imagined!

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.