The Painted Veil (2006)
“Lift not the painted veil which those who live call Life.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
This movie was good, what with pedigreed material (W. Somerset Maugham’s novel) and solid acting by the cast (Naomi Watts a favorite actress after how she pulled off King Kong), but it’s just not of the genre I’m into. If you enjoy film adaptations of British classics like Howard’s End and A Passage to India, you’ll appreciate this as a beautiful film.
I do have to say the actors in this film spoke Chinese way too well. (They should have used them in The Departed!) Madame Chiang Kai-shek spoke Mandarin with an atrocious accent, how much more the supposed peasants of the interior? They say Edward Norton studied some Chinese history in Yale and spent time in China. But even Toby Jones and Naomi Watts were speaking passable Chinese, so they must have had a great language coach on the set.
The story? Let me quote a reviewer of the book: It’s about “the restraints that marriage imposes upon passion.” He says Maugham concludes that “Marriage…is a matter of convenience. Passion, on the other hand, is a matter of inconvenience: it lurks untamed behind ‘the painted veil which those who live call life.'”
Trust me, I don’t choose these DVDs for their themes. I look at the bestsellers’ lists and rent accordingly. My sole criterion for selecting books, movies and TV shows is: What’s popular? That’s my secret to becoming a Millionaire: Suppress personal preferences and go with what’s hot.
The Painted Veil soundtrack features the pianist Lang Lang. Music composed and conducted by Alexandre Desplat.
Trivia: Greta Garbo played Mrs. Fane in the 1934 film version of The Painted Veil, a very loose adaptation.
No extras on the DVD I watched. Four stars…