chitown2bayarea
A flawless masterpiece. Definitely one of my favorites!
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/25/24
Full Review
tom e
At the top of my list of all-time favorites. Having spent many years in China I have a certain bias, but the lush cinematography of the beautiful country side and the clear-eyed depiction of the poverty that exists side by side is also reflected in the extreme cruelty and the beauty of grace and forgiveness that makes the film, for me, unforgettable. The music and the score are equally lush and beautiful and at times foreboding and dreadful, but equally unforgettable. Well done. Also, the ending is a great improvement over the ending of the original 1934 version of the film.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
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Audience Member
I looked at some of the reviews here before watching the movie and was surprised at some of the views, as they don't seem to fit my impressions of the novel. The book is a masterpiece in many ways. For some reason the ending is completely changed in this adaptation, which very much dilutes the lasting message of the story - that of a woman who becomes independent and wants to do something to change the world, so that women would not have to go through the same struggles that she did.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/21/23
Full Review
Audience Member
(Spoilers) This is a movie I have a love/hate relationship with. It's beautifully directed, the actors are all amazing, a wonderful movie all around. It's just such a painful end... I want this romance to survive... Her pain at the end is palpable. She finally loves him, and he's dead... It makes you wish Walter survived...
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/04/23
Full Review
kevin c
Edward Norton plays a doctor who is asked to assist with a cholera outbreak in a small Chinese village and takes along his unfaithful wife, played by Naomi Watts, who's not exactly pleased to be there. Performances from Norton and Watts alone is worth watching the film for, luckily the story is good as well. Liev Schreiber and Toby Jones costar.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
Audience Member
On a brief trip to London in the early 1920s, earnest and bookish bacteriologist Walter Fane (Edward Norton) is dazzled by Kitty Garstin (Naomi Watts), a London socialite. He proposes; she accepts ("only to get as far away from [her] mother as possible"), and the couple honeymoon in Venice. They travel to Walter's medical post in Shanghai, where he is stationed in a government lab studying infectious diseases. They are ill-suited, with Kitty much more interested in parties and the social life of the British expatriates. She meets Charles Townsend (Liev Schreiber), a married British vice consul, and they have an affair. When Walter finds out, he threatens divorce for adultery unless she accompanies him to a village in a remote area of China where he has volunteered to treat victims of an unchecked cholera epidemic. Kitty begs for a quiet divorce, which he initially refuses, but later says only if Townsend will leave his wife Dorothy to marry her. Charles declines to accept, despite earlier claiming his love for Kitty. The couple embark upon an arduous, two-week-long overland journey to the mountainous inland region, which is considerably faster and much easier if they traveled by river, but Walter is determined to make Kitty as uncomfortable as possible. Upon their arrival in Mei-tan-fu, she discovers they will be living in near-squalor, far removed from the town. Their cheerful neighbor Waddington (Toby Jones) is a British deputy commissioner living in relative opulence with Wan Xi (Lü Yan), a young Chinese woman. Walter and Kitty barely speak. Except for a cook and a Chinese soldier assigned to guard her during unrest due to the Chinese Revolution, she is alone for long hours. After visiting an orphanage run by a group of French nuns, Kitty volunteers and she is assigned to work in the music room. She is surprised to learn from the Mother Superior that her husband loves children, especially babies. She begins to see him differently, that he can be unselfish and caring. When he sees her with the children, he also realizes she is not as shallow and selfish as he had thought. Their marriage begins to blossom in the midst of the epidemic. She soon learns she is pregnant, but is unsure who the father is. Walter – in love with Kitty again – assures her it doesn't matter...
Manohla Dargis of The New York Times said the story seems "so unlikely for modern adaptation, particularly when, as is the case here, it hasn't been refitted with a contemporary hook or allegory for audiences who wouldn't know Maugham from Edna Ferber. Instead, as nicely directed by John Curran and adapted to the screen by Ron Nyswaner, this version of the story lulls you by turning Maugham's distaff bildungsroman into a fine romance. Even better, the new film gives us ample opportunity to spend time with Ms. Watts, whose remarkable talent helps keep movie faith and love alive, even in the tinniest, tiniest vehicles . . . An inveterate stealer and masticator of scenes, Mr. Norton is very fine here, especially early on, before his billing gets the better of the story and he begins riding around heroically on horseback . . . Whether through craft or constitution, [he] invests Walter with a petty cruelty that makes his character's emotional thaw and Kitty's predicament all the more poignant." Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times said the film "has all the elements in place to be a great epic, but it fails to connect, to paraphrase Maugham's contemporary E.M. Forster, the prose with the passion. It's impeccable, but leaves you cold." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone rated the film three out of four stars and commented, "If you're suspecting this third movie version of W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel may carry the infectious dullness of prestige filmmaking, rest easy . . . the film is a period piece propelled by emotions accessible to a modern audience . . . The Painted Veil has the power and intimacy of a timeless love story. By all means, let it sweep you away." Meghan Keane of the New York Sun said the film "may at times threaten to fall into an abyss of sentimentality, and it has moments that seem mere transitions to propel the plot, but it manages a charming historic portrait without insulting the audience's intelligence." Todd McCarthy of Variety thought the story "feels remote and old-school despite a frankness the two previous film versions lacked." He added, "Present scripter Ron Nyswaner makes some solid fundamental decisions, beginning with the telescoping down to the barest minimum the London-set opening . . . All the same, the film is still dominated by the stuffy, repressed personality of Fane, whose emotional stonewalling of his wife produces a stifling of Kitty's naturally more vivacious, if common, personality. Despite the extremes of human experience on view, there is a certain blandness to them as they play out, a sensation matched by the eye-catching but picture-postcard-like presentation of the settings . . . Even the ultra-capable Norton and Watts aren't fully able to galvanize viewer interest in their narrowly self-absorbed characters."
I think that "The Painted Veil" is a strong period drama based on the 1925 novel of the same title by W. Somerset Maugham about love, relationships and adultery. There´s solid acting from Naomi Watts and Edward Norton. And we get beautiful sceneries from the Huangyao Ancient Town in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Yes, it´s also sentimental and maybe a bit stiff, but I didn´t feel it became an issue.
Trivia: This is the third film adaptation of the Maugham book, following a 1934 film starring Greta Garbo and Herbert Marshall and a 1957 version called The Seventh Sin with Bill Travers and Eleanor Parker.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/21/23
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