| By Fred Topel
In Theaters December 9
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The last time Michelle Yeoh worked with Zhang Ziyi, they were fighting and speaking in Chinese. Now they’re playing Japanese geishas and speaking in English. Though the cultures and more are drastically different, Yeoh said the experience was the same.
“It didn't matter,” Yeoh said. “Seriously. After the initial sort of little thing where you think, 'Okay, we're speaking in a different language.' It didn't really matter because after a while the language is forgotten. We would get into the room with everyone and we would be talking and laughing and sometimes we would wonder what language we were speaking in. You forget about it and you just get taken with that. I think that's nice and is really truly magnificent.”
Yeoh’s fans know her as a martial arts action hero, and even others would recognize her as the kickass Bond girl from Tomorrow Never Dies. Memoirs of a Geisha is all about love and traditions and costumes and customs but it was perhaps the hardest job Yeoh’s ever had.
“It was a very different kind of physical. It's very disciplined. It reminded me very much of the days when I was a ballerina. All that discipline and where you going through all of the grueling, difficult tasks of the movements, but when people looked at it, it looked as if it were so easy for you to be on points. It was the same thing.”
As Mameha, the mentor to geisha in training Sayuri (Zhang), Yeoh had to master specific actions like picking up a cup the geisha way. “I think that it definitely proved to be a great challenge because we had to do it as if it was effortless and they weren't simple rituals either. You think, 'Oh, I'm just picking up a cup. How difficult can that be?' But it's the way you place your fingers, where it is, how you put your hand there and how you lift it up has it's own movement and it's own grace to it. And we had to learn it all.”
Though the research and training were extensive, Yeoh relished the chance to get into character. “I think that as an actor when you're approaching a character like that that has a certain background you have to throw yourself into that so that it becomes second nature to you. If the little gestures, the little tilts, the movements, the posture, when you wear the kimono once with the shoes you are very tall because you have no choice. You're right up there, and with those heels… have you seen those slippers? Ziyi and I would pumping each other up, going, 'Okay, girl. Don't fall.' And the streets were cobblestones. You think, 'Why? Who invented these shoes?' Probably a guy.”
Geishas are Japanese and director Rob Marshall decided that the best Asian actors for the characters happened to be Chinese. Yeoh had no problem switching cultures. “I love the Japanese culture. I always have even as a young kid. I've always been going to Japan. A lot. And not just for the food and the shopping. I went with any excuse that I could. So when I knew that I was doing this movie I went there as an observer because the best way to learn is by observing and watching how a person, a Japanese person would react or act in a normal circumstance.”
When you think about how much ass Yeoh has kicked in her career, it may be hard to think of her as a submissive servant of males. But even the greatest tough cookie wants a chance to stretch as an actor. “I think that first and foremost I know what my profession is. I'm an actress and so when I go to approach a character, I approach it as a professional would do. I understand the basis for it, and what I have to do for that particular role. Then you do have to disassociate yourself from that because I am a model woman of today. Mameha was in the '30's and '40's in an environment that we cannot even begin to understand. It was very important for me to understand her as a character and as a person living in that time. She had taken vows of being a geisha and she knew the rules of being a geisha and she knew that she was the best geisha and so she lived by the rules. How I prepared was that once you go through the thing and you're approaching your character on set, the layers of the kimono start going on, as your hair goes up, as your makeup is put up you start to feel all the limitations, all the restrictions. Every time the string is tied there is one reminder and a second reminder and by the obi was there I was contained. And I had to be for this character because she was always that.”
Despite their subservient role, there is still a lot of girl power in the film. It’s an ensemble cast full of women in the leading and supporting roles. The men play second fiddle. Plus, the themes surpass gender.
“I think that at the end of the day when you talk about love and you talk about jealousy and you talk about rivalry, it transcends time. I can't foresee a time in the future when that is going to disappear. I think that it's something that will always stay with us because we're human. Unfortunately sometimes it's amplified in some people more than the rest. Some people tend to be more nurturing, more forgiving, more patient. Others aren't like that, and I don't know why, but from the moment that they are born they have that sense of bitterness and anger and 'I will cut down anyone in my way.' How did that happen? A bad childhood? Well, it's so easy to say that. You can't let that do that to you, but it does happen. And I think that this movie also reflects on the relationship between a man and a woman, the desire to love. It's the desire to go after something that you have. I think that it doesn't matter what period of time it is. It happened a thousand years ago and it will happen a thousand years in the future.”
So don’t cal it a chick flick or Michelle Yeoh will kick your ass. “Honestly, it's not a movie just for women. It's for men as well. It's a movie that gives you a glimpse into a culture that some of us think we know a little bit about. Some of us have no idea about it. It's such a beautifully sensual film, but at the same time a very pure film. It's a celebration of a culture. When I did it and when I see it, I think that for me there is a little bit of a geisha in all of us whether we lived in that time or now. What I took away from it was that those women learned how to listen to people. They learned how to make people feel good about themselves and don't you find that when people feel good about themselves they in turn are going to make someone else feel good. Soon it'll be a very happy, smiling room. For me I think that was very, very precious. What I took away most from this movie was a new family. That's really particularly sweet. I hope that people will go in there just for the two hours, two and a half hours and be swept away into a magical time and place and leave all your worries behind and feel love and have moments where you think, 'I did that. I remember doing that. I remember that guy, that woman.'”
Memoirs of a Geisha opens December 9. |
