Product Details

• Actors: Ziyi Zhang, Suzuka Ohgo, Ken Watanabe, Kôji Yakusho, Youki Kudoh
• Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, French
• Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
  PLEASE NOTE: Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called "region-free" DVD players. For more information on RCE, click here.
• Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: May 15, 2007
• Run Time: 145 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (362 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000LXH0B8
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #62,929 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Memoirs of a Geisha (Single Disc Version)" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Chicago director Rob Marshall's pretty but empty (or pretty empty) film has all the elements of an Oscar® contender: solid adaptation (from Arthur Golden's bestseller), beautiful locale, good acting, lush cinematography. But there's something missing at the heart, which leaves the viewer sucked in, then left completely detached from what's going on.

It's hard to find fault with the fascinating story, which traces a young girl's determination to free herself from the imprisonment of scullery maid to geisha, then from the imprisonment of geisha to a woman allowed to love. Chiyo (Suzuka Ohgo), a young girl with curious blue eyes, is sold to a geisha house and doomed to pay off her debt as a cleaning girl until a stranger named The Chairman (Ken Watanabe) shows her kindness. She is inspired to work hard and become a geisha in order to be near the Chairman, with whom she has fallen in love. An experienced geisha (Michelle Yeoh) chooses to adopt her as an apprentice and to use as a pawn against her rival, the wicked, legendary Hatsumomo (Gong Li). Chiyo (played as an older woman by Ziyi Zhang), now renamed Sayuri, becomes the talk of the town, but as her path crosses again and again with the Chairman's, she finds the closer she gets to him the further away he seems. Her newfound "freedom" turns out to be trapping, as men are allowed to bid on everything from her time to her virginity.

Some controversy swirled around casting Chinese actresses in the three main Japanese roles, but Zhang, Yeoh and Gong in particular ably prove they're the best for the part. It's admirable that all the actors attempted to speak Japanese-accented English, but some of the dialogue will still prove difficult to understand; perhaps it contributes to some of the emotion feeling stilted. Geisha has all the ingredients of a sweeping, heartbreaking epic and follows the recipe to a T, but in the end it's all dressed up with no place to go.--Ellen A. Kim

Product Description

Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 05/15/2007 Run time: 145 minutes Rating: Pg13

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, Brilliant and One of the Best Performances I've Seen in Years!, April 9, 2006

By 

Zach Kluckman "Tigereyes" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Memoirs of a Geisha (Two-Disc Widescreen Edition) (DVD)

I'm not sure we're all seeing the same movie here. One comment I keep hearing is that the actresses did not perform well, and I cannot comprehend it. Ziyi Zhang especially gave one of the best performances I have seen in years, at least. Just look at her physically shaking during her last scene with Ken Watanabe. This complete giving over to the emotion of the character is nearly unsurpassed in anything I've seen in years, and I'm a huge cinemaphile. That's not to mention the flawless way she carried the postures and demeanor of the child star that played her young self through-out, giving a sense of consistency that I have almost never seen done this well. It's early impossible to remember that these two actresses are not really the same person with the way their performances meshed. So, maybe it's the reserved nature of Asian women, and the dualing of this nature with a sense of individuality and self-expression that people are interpreting as "not understanding the character"?
All I can say is, the cinematography and settings are gorgeous, as are the actresses (and what a stellar cast!), the performances are great (maybe the bar has been lowered so much lately that the degree of skill brought to the screen here is more than some people can handle). That's the only reason I can offer for the bad reactions I have heard.
The story is involving, and very realistic in terms of human nature. The romance is wonderful. There are flashes of humor and some of the script is pure poetry (and as a poet you can believe me on that!) I could go on all day, but let me just say this.
The movie is awesome, and the time flew by for me. It is not the over-wrought heart-rending sap that some may want it to be, but it is very true to the way most people behave, and especially in the reserved manner of the Japanese. In my book everyone involved in this deserves a huge round of kudos, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys beautiful things, and incredibly realized films.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful movie @}->---, February 18, 2006

By 

Little Miss Cutey (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Memoirs of a Geisha (Full Screen 2-Disc Special Edition) (DVD)

Memoirs of a Geisha is a stunning movie. I haven't read the book, but now wish I had. The movie is close to 2 1/2 hours long, but the story and scenery are so captivating, it seems so much quicker. The costumes are fantastic and it's no wonder they are nominated for Oscars.
It tells the story of a little girl called Chiyo who along with her older sister, is sold by their father who has no money. The people who bought her, want to make her a geisha so she goes off to school but brings disgrace to herself and therefore they make her their slave. Upon chance, she meets a kind man who buys her a sweet cherry ice cone. She never forgets him and sees him again by chance some years later. Now she has hope and learns again (in a crash course) how to be a geisha and her new name is Sayuri.
The story that unfolds from there has ups and downs but the ending is so moving that of course I cried my head off. The setting is beautiful and it made me want to go and visit Japan. The music too is lovely and I hope they do get some Oscars next week because it's a very deserving movie. There is also a great performance by an actress called Li Gong who plays 'Queen Bitch' Hatsumomo and look for a small role played by Ted Levine who we normally see in a funny role as Captain Leland Stottlemeyer in Monk.
Beautiful move that you absolutely have to see. (Especially on the big screen if you still can).

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful film; wonderful performances, November 6, 2006

By 

Nicole Bradshaw "Nicole Bradshaw" (Jackson, MS USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Memoirs of a Geisha (Full Screen 2-Disc Special Edition) (DVD)

I read the novel this film is based on and loved it, so I was looking forward to the movie when it was released. I was pleased to see that the movie followed the book very closely. The film was absolutely beautiful, with arresting shots of the geisha as they went about their daily tasks and beautiful pans of the gorgeous faces of the actresses. There were also a few nice shots of (what was supposed to be) the Japanese countryside.

The film follws Chiyo (Sayuri), a young girl from the country who grows to become one of the most celebrated geisha in pre-war Japan. I know that there was a big stink when the film came out that some of the actresses cast were Chinese, rather than Japanese, but I say phooey on that. You cast an actor to play a role. I've seen plenty of straight actors turn in wonderfully nuanced performances of gay characters. I've seen plenty of older actors play roles that were younger than they were, and vice versa. So what? The director's job is to find the right actor for the role, and that actor may or may not be the exact nationality referred to in the script. The point is, does this performer tell the story?

And the performers in Memoirs of a Geisha definitely do. Ziyi Zhang (Chiyo/Sayuri), Li Gong (Hatsumomo), and Michelle Yeoh (Mameha) all give their characters a wonderful depth and subtext, and I really enjoyed them. I know that some critics also huffed about the movie being Westernized, with the actors all speaking English, etc. Wha . . . ? The movie is based on a book written by Arthur Golden, a middle-aged white guy from Tennessee. How can you get more Western than that? Anyway, I personally found the film to be a visual jewel with fabulous performances. I recommend it.