The Painted Veil
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Movie Reviews of The Painted Veil
Movie Review: Sublime Forgiveness
Summary: 5 Stars
It's Shanghai in 1925. Kitty (Naomi Watts) has just rashly married soft-spoken bacteriologist Walter (Edward Norton) to escape her domineering mother. They immediately leave London, scarcely knowing one another.
Kitty, who is rather shallow and likes games, has little in common with the quiet, cerebral Walter, who is work-obsessed. She naively believes her new lover, the British Consul (Lev Schreiber) will leave HIS wife for her. Of course he won't and of course Walter discovers the affair.
In retribution, Walter drags Kitty overland to a cholera epidemic zone, where he struggles to help the suffering locals while making Kitty suffer for her adulteries.
Both characters discover new inner strengths and gradually learn to tolerate, respect, and even forgive each other, as the disease cuts a swathe through the local population.
Magnificent cinematography, authentic Mandarin dialogue and accent, and a great screenplay augment Norton's finest acting job to date. Support from Toby Jones and Diana Rigg is extraordinary. Curran directs the Somerset Maugham novel well.
This film is beautiful, gripping, subtle, and worth multiple watchings--so don't hesitate to buy and add to your collection, cinephile or not.
(Reviewer's chops: Mandarin speaker, former resident of China, personally met Norton's father several times in SW China).
Movie Review: worth watching and even talking to people about
Summary: 5 Stars
Confirms my idea that movies made from novels can be the best of film going fare, having a plot with a beginning, a point and a satisfactory ending.
The movie is filmed and takes place in the karst country of southern/SW China. The beautiful shades of green of paddy rice and the tall karsts dominate the view just as the river dominates the people's lives. This beauty alone is worth watching the movie.
It is a story of a rich spoiled woman, who marries a man she does not love to escape the fate of "an old maid" and her mother's sharp tongue. Her new husband is the 1920's British equivalent of today's geek, he being a MD-bacteriologist stationed in Shanghai. He volunteers to go work with a remote rural village under siege from cholera and backmails his new bride into going with him over an affair she had that he knows about. The plot is their falling in love in the midst of continuing death and danger from anti-foreigner antipathy from the Chinese.
The plot is interesting and involving, the beauty of the land overwhelming, the point of the movie poignant and heartmoving. All which make the film excellent thought and viewing pleasure.
It would even make a worthwhile movie for a small group discussion over several important issues: the meaning of love and marriage, the importance of believing in something noble and sacrificial service to that ideal.
Movie Review: A film worth watching!
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Painted Veil" is definitely one of the best films that I've seen so far this year. Set in the swinging '20s, not much is swinging for Kitty Fane (Naomi Watts). She's just married a stodgy doctor (Edward Norton) who has taken her away from her dilettantish life in London for the mind-numbing boredom of colonial Shanghai. Kitty's problem is that she thinks love should be passionate and marriage should be a source of amusement. Having lived a privileged life, she has no regard for the political turmoil taking place in China. She also has no regard for her hard-working husband. Instead, Kitty indulges in a wild affair with the British Vice Consul (Liev Schreiber). Her husband is no fool, however. He quickly catches onto the affair. As such, he gives her an ultimatum. She can either go with him to a cholera stricken village or he can sue her for divorce in a time where divorce is based on fault (e.g. allegations of adultery). Kitty quickly realizes that her lover is all talk, and will never leave his wife for her. She therefore makes the journey to remote Mei-tan-fu with her husband. There, Kitty's eyes are opened to a world far beyond what she could ever imagine. Too late, she realizes that she loves her husband. But her mind is finally clear, like a clear fountain - hence the haunting and riveting rendition of "a la claire fontaine" as the final tune.Movie Review: If I could only give 10 stars for this excellent production
Summary: 5 Stars
The tag line was what intriqued me "Sometimes the greatest journey is the distance between two people". After I finished this movie, I knew that I had to read the book. I found that I enjoyed the movie more than the book because the movie portrayed more of Kitty's realization of love for her husband. It's a love situation that happens more often than we thought. A woman has a good man, but thinks that another man has something that her man doesn't, only to realize in the end that her man is the better man after all. Sadly, to Kitty, the realization came too late.
I don't know why I love this movie so much despite its gory details. I usually don't like movies with disturbing images but I love this movie despite of it. It's a brilliant piece of art. Edward Norton is marvellous in it, he portrays Dr. Fane well as a man whom one would pity him at first, understand him later, and love him in the end. Naomi Watts is perfect for her role. Her luminous skin, which is an emphasized point in the book, is one of her best assets shown in this movie.
This is the only movie that I've seen that is better than the book itself (well, actually.. also the Sound of Music). I wish Edward Norton would consider making the movie out of the book Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck, which is one of my favorite books.
Movie Review: Capitivating!
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Painted Veil" is a remarkable movie. From the first haunting notes of Eric Satie's "Gnossienne" to the last plaintive chanson in which we hear the voice of Kitty (Naomi Watts) promising never to forget, the viewer will be mesmerized. Music, in fact, is integral to the story: the Satie piece, which recalls the first encounter of Kitty and Walter (Edward Norton) in an elegant London salon, becomes metaphorical of their troubled marriage as she plunks it out on an out-of-tune upright piano in a rundown convent in China of the 1920s.
The beautifully understated performances of Watts and Norton underscore the complexity of Maugham's seemingly simple story. Particularly notable is the poignant performance of Diana Rigg as the elderly Mother Superior whose own marriage to god has become strained by too many years in the unforgiving climate of rural China, ravaged not only by warring factions but also by cholera.
The lush silk dresses worn by Watts evoke a bygone era, and the superb cinematography transforms what one suspects is smog into a seemingly painted backdrop of looming mist-enshrouded crags that appear to hover between earth and sky, just as the fates of the characters hover between life and death.