The Painted Veil
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Movie Reviews of The Painted Veil
Movie Review: Old fashioned
Summary: 5 Stars
It is so refreshing to have more well done movies without the trashy language. I have stated this in several reviews, but I want the people that do not want to hear it, to know that "here's another one that you may enjoy".
This beautifully written, and produced movie, grabs you from the start. Gives insight to the day when marriages weren't all about love, sometimes, or at least dont start out that way, in this case.
It is a great journey, going from marrying without knowing each other, but having certain expectations from one another. Like behaviors, Walter is someone that is awkard with his affections, not comfortable with the lights on when making love. But Kitty wants passion, and is eager for someone to give that to her.
He does finally get to express his passion, as he and Kitty's relationship builds, as they start seeing each other for who they are, the realization that they love the qualities in each other, as they discover one another's identities.
It is such a wonderful thing to visibly SEE the two of them, change the the way they SEE each other, to watch them fall in love.
All the parts were well played, and vital to the movie. I loved Waddington, and his part as a friend to the Fane's and love to his companion, who also played well.
The actor that played as Kitty's guard was really great, he was so natural.
The one that spoke with the warlord, was super, his part was very well written, very clever, and he was perfect, I loved his part. His whole role is very believable.
The reason that I titled this Old fashioned, was because the wonderful older movies didnt end with "happily ever after" every time. Like Casa Blanca. Just a really good drama. Highest recommendations.
Movie Review: Beautiful Movie -- Ed Norton at His Best
Summary: 5 Stars
What a gorgeous movie -- the writing, the cinematogrophy, the score. Watts, whose mother makes no bones about her desire for Watts to marry and leave home, does exactly this when she weds a man she does not love, awkward bacteriologist (Norton), and moves to Shanghai with him for his job. While there, she meets charming, married womanizer (Schreiber) and the two begin an affair. When Norton discovers this, he gives her an ultimatum: come with me into a cholera epidemic, or I will divorce you. With no alternative, Watts follows him into a beautiful devastation; terribly sick and dying populace with a backdrop of gorgeous natural beauty. In their time together, they discover things about themselves and one another that they weren't aware of at the start, and you slowly begin to care about characters that are generally unlikeable, or whom you felt indifferent towards, when you first met them. Some reviewers found the movie predictable, but the ending could easily have been reversed, with a seperate set of emotional consequences that are interesting to ponder. This movie left me thinking for days. Based on a book by W. Somerset Maugham (who wrote the epic Of Human Bondage) and brilliantly acted by Watts and Norton -- who is always good and especially excellent in this adaptation -- this movie definitely has a lot going for it and is worth watching. I wouldn't describe this as a romantic movie even though it is a love story, and my husband (Godfather-loving sports fanatic whose favorite movie is A Clockwork Orange and who had planned to fall asleep within the first ten minutes of viewing) enjoyed it very much as well, so men . . . don't judge this one by its cover. Give it a try.Movie Review: A moving story, stellar acting & beautiful cinematography!
Summary: 5 Stars
I watched this movie not only because I had loved Somerset Maugham's novel of the same name, but because I have a deep respect for the acting talents of Naomi Watts [21 Grams] and also Edward Norton [American History X, Down in the Valley]. The movie doesn't disappoint. Naomi Watts plays a London socialite, Kitty who for want of better suitors & a desperate desire to get away from her controlling mother accepts Walter's [Edward Norton] proposal and accompanies him to Shanghai, China. She soon gets bored with Walter, and finds herself embroiled in a passionate affair with the married British Vice-Consul, Charles Townsend [Liev Shreiber]. The affair however is doomed because Charles is a lothario who enjoys his fun too much for lasting emotional attachments. Kitty finds herself being found out, and Walter exacts his revenge by compelling Kitty to accompany him to a remote village where cholera is rampant. The rest of the movie deals with the emotional complexities of two tormented souls who are brought together under harsh and unforgiving circumstances and learn to come to terms with each other. The two leads here are compelling and believable in their roles, and in fact though Watts and Shreiber are a real-life couple, what struck me more was the great chemistry between Watts and Norton. The cinematography is simply beautiful, evoking the lush Chinese rural landscape, and the score is equally haunting. There are also good supporting roles here - the Mother Superior [Diana Rigg], Shreiber and a few others all add to the emotional depth of this very human drama. All in all, a very poignant study of the complexities of human relationships.Movie Review: Not Maugham's ending, but very good
Summary: 5 Stars
Hollywood just can't leave well enough alone. Way back in 1925 Somerset Maugham wrote a truly forward-thinking feminist story about a vapid woman who comes to realize there's more to life than the empty fun that she's always craved and been led astray by. Ever since, Maugham's ending has been twisted by filmmakers to make it a second-chance-at-love romance. This version even adds a little Chinese political subplot that was entirely absent from the book. So the Chinese background gets modernized, while women are thrown back into love story land in the last reel. So it goes.
But when a movie is this well put together, who cares? The screenplay--despite my quibble with the direction the end takes--is very sharp. The scenery is magnificent, and the acting is stellar. Naomi Watts captures Kitty Fane's vapidity and makes her not just understandable but sympathetic. Edward Norton is likewise great as her husband Walter, a man who in his anger at being cheated on decides to take them both on a suicide mission to a cholera-plagued area. The supporting cast is excellent--especially Toby Jones and Diana Rigg.
The movie holds up to repeated viewings because the performances are so good, and the mood created by the director is mesmerizing. Music plays a big part in its success. The selective use of a piano piece by Satie is enhanced by a score that sounds as if Satie had composed the whole thing. I actually scrambled to find out whether the waltz featured in the score was Satie's--it wasn't. Just beautiful.
It's sad that movies like this don't meet with more success in the movie theaters.
Movie Review: a real love story
Summary: 5 Stars
Perhaps I loved the movie in part so much because Walter Fane's personality is similar to my husband's, and because he was portrayed -to the smallest gesture- so incredibly well: I'm amazed at the imagination that went into those gestures for that personality in that period and got them right. The film is extremely well done and exquisitely lovely, simply on a technical level. Add that the story is one of the most compelling I've seen in film, a story where love is not only 'as strong as than death' but as sin, human faithlessness -- love that is deeply traced in and almost inextricable from forgiveness; where both characters emerge from a greater or lesser degree of self centeredness and pride (Kitty tends to think too highly of herself, and Fane's reflexive action is to despise himself) to a much larger and more meaningful, staggeringly humble world, in which 'love and duty are one' and there is grace to forget oneself and accept another person completely. Love in this story, even beyond the backdrop of an inegalitarian society (and the sharp height of the Chinese mountains), is full of the steep reality of inequalities: all behavior is not equal, all things are not to be equally tolerated. There are such things as duty and virtue, and some actions are base and selfish, some people debase themselves. And in the face of that, not in the forgetting or ignoring of it, there is such a thing as forgiveness, acceptance, redemption, nobility- love. It is a real story, and like all real stories it tells the truth: it captures an ideal and makes it accessible without compromising its beauty or transcendence.