concealed by a veil

I've been meaning to write something about The Painted Veil for several weeks now, but never got around to it. It's an extremely beautiful and well-crafted period piece, but moves periodically with a sullen slowness. Clocking in at two hours, it's not a movie that you should watch if you're exhausted. Overall, it's a very good adaptation of the book, and shot with a beautiful, overarching simplicity.

The acting was very good on all fronts. In addition to the superb job done by the two leads, the Chinese peasants seemed real. Naomi Watts is an extremely beautiful and versatile actress. This love story is really about her and how she transforms from a simple and shallow person into a noble and admirable woman. Ed Norton is also commendable in his role, although you get the feeling that he's better off playing parts where his character can express an overabundance of emotion rather than turning it all inwards, as he does here.

As a movie, it gets Asian culture right (Edward Norton did major in Asian History at Yale). Nature is as crucial to this story as any of the main characters. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the lush greenery and mist covered mountain tops took up too much screen time. The movie clearly tries to capture the Eastern way of thought that humans should blend and be at peace with nature.

The movie is adapted from Somerset Maugham's tight and dry book with a heavy psychological bent. To me, there are three scenes that are virtuoso in their scope. The first is Walter bringing his wife to a cholera infested town with the intention of killing them both painfully as revenge for her philandering ways. The second is the husband and wife purposely eating uncooked salad in the disease-stricken town in an effort to prove their indifference to each other and proving who has more balls. The last is the good doctor purposely committing suicide (via self-injection with the cholera virus) so that his pregnant wife would leave and go back to Shanghai. It's pure genius and so twisted because these people are normal, but they are capable of doing such monstrous things to each other.

The Painted Veil refers to how little we know one another and ourselves because we're forced to don a veil that society thrusts upon us. Some people survive very well in this environment (they're assholes), but most people live sad and broken lives, never understanding each other. It's only when the weight of society is lifted from Walter and Kitty do they realize their true selves (mostly Kitty) and each other. The story is bleak indictment on society but uplifting about the true nature of people if only they can see themselves clearly. Kitty's transformation is so wonderful because we see society Kitty completely broken down, then the new Kitty being built from nothing at all. It's quite impressive.

The book itself was much more stark and complicated. There were no romantic scenes in a boat or anything of the sort. In fact, reform is much harder for Kitty in the book. She's still not completely free from society after she returns to civilization post Walter's death. Kitty falls a bit into a limbo between her old frivolous and inane life and the new, more purposeful life that she has created. In the end, she has to escape from society again in order not to lose the self that she so painstakingly created.