One Yo-Yo Ma cello solo too many

We finally got around to seeing Geisha this weekend -- had already read the reviews, was hoping it would turn out to be better than rumoured. (One can always hope). What I saw was a potentially great movie undermined by lazy, cop-out choices, weird pacing, and lapses in taste. Either Rob Marshall didn't have the skill to bring it off, or the studio forced him into expedient but fatal (artistically speaking) decisions. Ocean-eyed Sayuri achieves her quest to become a geisha, and then -- wait, what's this? There's been a war going on? And it just ended? And Japan lost? And lovely ladies are being banished to remote areas to harvest rice and make like characters from The Good Earth? No way!

To be fair, parts of Geisha really did resemble a powerful, affecting, Oscar-calibre movie. That mostly happened in the first third, before Suzuka Ohgo grows up to become Zhang Ziyi. Everyone knows by now about the flap over Chinese actresses playing Japanese characters, and I have nothing to add to that discussion; I approve of culture-crossing. Nevertheless, it has to be said that the real standout performances here were by Ohgo and Koji Yakusho (as a physically disfigured, surly but soulful engineer who deeply loves Sayuri). They gave the movie just enough depth to save it, or almost save it, from being a gorgeous mess.