The White Countess

I had an opportunity to see this movie at a screening. The White Countess is not scheduled to open in theaters until December, so it was a very early screening. I am saying this because I have a little bit of doubt that what I saw was the final cut.

Based on a screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro (The Saddest Music in the World, and the original novel for the movie, Remains of the Day), and featuring a magnificent cast (including Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave in addition to Fiennes and Richardson), this last Merchant-Ivory film (Ismail Merchant died this year) has bred a great expectation in movie lovers' hearts. I regret to say what I saw was not the best of Merchant-Ivory.

It is Shanghai in 1930s where all different sorts of Europeans and Americans established their ways of living inside the ancient Chinese city. The story is about an American middle-aged man who lives in a world inside his head, blind to the world around him. Jackson (Ralph Fiennes) is a former American diplomat who lost his vision. Yes, and yes—in both physical and psychological sense. He had buried his wife and a son after a house fire, and a few years after that, lost his only surviving child in a terrorist bombing incidence that also took away his sight. It is no surprise that the man is in a bitter despair. He becomes a man of lost faith. In his darkness, Jackson obstinately clings to and cultivates a rather esoteric ideal—creating a perfect nightclub. When Jackson meets Sofia Belinsky (Natasha Richardson), a Russian Countess who is forced to work dishonorable jobs to support her dead husband's family and her daughter, he immediately sees in his head a perfect centerpiece for his dream club.

One thing that is extraordinary about this movie is the beautiful acting performance. Fiennes, often called the best internal actor of his generation, gives a stunningly exquisite performance as the blind man who resides in a world inside his mind—take just an example of the shadow of disappointment casting down on the lonely man's face when his new friend Matsuda bids him good night after a long night's conversation about nightclubs in Shanghai. It somehow makes cinematic sense that a person who cannot see other people's faces inadvertently reveals his soul with most minute movements of eyes and facial muscles. Although Fiennes' delicate features and willow physique do not quite conjure up the image of Humphrey Bogart to which the Jackson character curiously alludes, Fiennes makes a perfect bar owner in the style of Rick Blaine (Casablanca) meets Oscar Hopkins (played by Fiennes in Oscar and Lucinda).

Richardson wonderfully materializes "the perfect combination of the erotic and the tragic" and gives a heart-breaking performance as the aristocratic woman fallen to the reality of a horrid and abject life, and a mother who is going to do anything to save her child's future.

And so—here I am facing the unpleasant task of talking about the rest—it is pity that the director James Ivory lets these actors stand there bare and alone. Hardly any cinematic device is utilized to foreground the emotion or romance of this couple. The result is quite devastating. The romance sparkles moment by moment through the wonderful work of these two talented actors, but those moments do not connect well with each other, lost and found and lost again. Some scenes seem to need more editing work. For example, the horse race scene looks like a raw material from a daily—very awkward. For the lack of romantic fire, the screenplay is partly at fault in its meagerness. Although it contains an abundance of intriguing metaphors and keen observations on human lives, the screenplay does lack something—be it suave packaging of romance or absorbing dialog. But ultimately, I blame the director for not coming up with solutions to make the whole thing work better.

I normally love Ivory films. I don't know why this one did not work for me. Perhaps Ivory is not a man for romantic materials. Or perhaps the death of his partner, Merchant, took its toll on this film. In any case, if what I saw last night was the final version, Fiennes and Richardson might not be able to be rescued from this movie during this Oscar season.

The White Countess achieves the "perfect balance of romance and tragedy." It is the story of two broken souls who each end up being the remedy to the other's fall from grace. While this description may not point to anything extraordinary on its own, Natasha Richardson (Countess Sophia Belinsky) and Ralph Fiennes (Todd Jackson) dazzle us with outstanding performances in this final Merchant-Ivory film. Superb acting, complex characters, and visually stunning sets make for a realistic, timeless five-star drama.

Ralph Fiennes plays the role of Todd Jackson, a disillusioned American ex-diplomat. The loss of his family and vision to Chinese-Japanese political turmoil destroy his hopes and prospects for the world. The disappointment in the stagnant progress of the League of Nations drives Jackson away from the desperate political scene, and he attempts to shut out all reminders of an uncontrollable painful world. He goes on spending his time frequenting Shanghai's classiest bars, surrounding himself in luxury and warmth. He finds friendship in a Japanese man named Matsuda who shares his dreams to create the perfect bar. People warn Jackson that Matsuda is a feared political revolutionary; however, this has no impact on their relationship—Jackson has completely shut the doors to the outside world. Fiennes expertly sticks to his character delivering the heavy, demanding lines with eloquence while appearing to be truly blind.

In his quest to create this perfect bar he runs into Countess Sophia Belinsky a Russian Aristocrat who has fled to Shanghai escape the Bolshevik Revolution. She is living with her late husband's family and her daughter, Katya. She single-handedly supports them by prostituting herself despite their assailment and complete lack of gratitude. Jackson finds in her the perfect balance of romance and tragedy and asks her to be the centerpiece of his bar and names it of her. Natasha Richardson emanates a deep sadness and longing for a once beautiful world and lets the audience feel what Jackson finds in Countess Sophia.

The two of them succeed in creating their own controllable world. With the right music, the right crowd, and a sense of political tension, Jackson feels he has made his dream come true. However, at the end of the night, Countess Sophia must return to the slums and the outside world with all its troubles and other unpredictable variables. As Jackson's relationship with Sophia develops, he begins to realize the impracticality of his "heavy doors". This accompanied with Matsuda's luring of a "broader canvas" slowly cause Jackson to emerge from his shell. At the end of the film, Jackson and Sophia return to the outside world together with a new hope found in one another.

The themes of isolation and alienation are rampant in this film and occur on many levels. Sophia is shut off from her family and eventually abandoned because of her disgraceful job. Jackson is blind physically and mentally from the real world. They are strangers in a foreign country, a country whose sole foreign policy for the past several centuries has been isolationism (they built a wall to keep people out). These instances are not simply strewn about but are intricately woven into the plot to create a deeper, more meaningful story.

The White Countess explores devastation and new hope, heartbreak and new love, and shows us the hopelessness of walls and cages. We can always close our eyes but that doesn't mean everything around us will disappear.

If there ever was a film with the right elements in it, this was it. After all, James Ivory was directing and the screen play by Kazuo Ishiguro, who had worked with the director before, to much better results in "The Remains of the Day". Alas, this film has a flat feeling, in sharp contrast with the other films by Mr. Ivory.

We are taken to the Shanghai of the thirties which was a city with a large international community. Among them, the story finds the impoverished Russian aristocrats that are living in need. Horror of horrors, Countess Sofia is forced to work in a dive, often frequented by low life characters. Although it's left to our imagination, could this poor aristocrat be also one of "those women"?

It is there where Todd Jackson, a blind American with a lot of influence in the right circles, meets Sofia and decides to ask her to be the hostess for the new night club he wants to start. Into this picture walks a Japanese business man, Mr. Matsuda, who befriends Jackson. Matsuda has a hidden agenda, as he wants to mix different groups of opposing sides at night spot.

The Japanese invasion puts an end to Jackson's dreams. At the same time, Sofia is able to get the needed amount of money for she and the family to go to Hong Kong. The only problem is that Olga, the family matriarch has another idea in mind: Sofia must stay behind! The problem with the film is that there is not enough tension, or passion, in these people on the screen. In a way, this movie doesn't convince us these characters are real.

The mostly English cast does what it can, but they have done much better before. The magnificent Vanessa Redgrave has nothing to do, which is the ultimate sin of the movie. Ralph Fiennes' Jackson is not one of the best roles he's ever played. For that matter, Natasha Richardson, with the phony Russian accent, doesn't add anything to the story.

In a way, the movie feels empty. We can't even imagine an Ivory-Merchant production this shabby before. Maybe the problem lies with the untimely death of Mr. Merchant. The film needed some editing and trimming because with a running time of 138 minutes, is just too long.

Sorry to say that despite the incredible pedigree of everyone concerned, this film was disappointing. It is beautifully shot and designed, with all the elegance and taste that one comes to expect from Merchant-Ivory, and of course the literary sensibility seems even more marked due to the scripting by Kazuo Ishiguro.

But the film is lifeless. It has plenty of aesthetic style but it has no momentum or vigor. The very accomplished performances by a truly wonderful cast are somewhat wasted when the pace is so glacial and the overall sense of film-making seems so stodgy and fatigued.

I am reminded of how frustrating I found, years ago, Merchant-Ivory's adaptation of Ishiguro's REMAINS OF THE DAY to be, despite again a stellar cast. I know there are people who would disagree strongly with me, but all the fascinating tragic interior sense of the butler's thoughts that made the book so absorbing and moving could not be communicated in a motion picture, no matter how talented an actor Anthony Hopkins is, so we wound up spending a couple of hours looking at a great actor nearly expressionless as he worked so hard to make his proper and repressed character neither register any emotions on his face nor express any in what he said.

Here again we have the same problem. There are huge emotions under the surface here, but because of the foreground sense of repression (and because of the cool-to-the-point-of-leisurely-and-moribund film-making style) we wind up watching Ralph Fiennes do his own version of Hopkins' "sorry, I can't say or feel or show anything because my character is supposed to be so repressed" act.

Granted, these are essential, trademark issues in Ishiguro's work. But it seems that without the vivid interior turmoil so eloquently expressed in his prose to help illuminate the character's stoicism, the result on screen is just....bland. Natasha Richardson fares much, much better, since her character need not be as repressed. And her performance is stunning. And John Wood makes the most out of what is essentially a TWO-LINE role(!!).

Actually, the whole Russian family is handled as a tour-de-force by the acting ensemble, and probably would have been enough to really put this picture over-the-top had not the fatally inexpressive scenes of Jackson and Matsuda ballasted the work into such a torpor. Some of this heaviness is admittedly inherent in Ishiguro's script, but I sense the very same words could have been imbued with the same gravity without nearly the somnambulent wooziness Ivory has made out of them.

I am an unabashed fan of Merchant-Ivory's work, and am saddened by the recent death of Ismail Merchant. The team of Merchant/Ivory/Ruth Prawer Jhabvala/Richard Robbins has created some real cinematic milestones. Two of the Forster adaptations are masterpieces, and many of the Indian films are rare gems. So I'm not one of those who find this dynasty to be too "artsy" or whatever other criticisms have been leveled at them by impatient filmgoers.

Yet "impatience" is indeed what I ultimately felt with this plodding execution. It was a frustrating experience, not the least because I could see how close Ivory was to achieving what he must have wanted to achieve, and how hard everyone must have worked to create that sense of Shanghai on the eve of its tragic invasion by the Japanese. It has all the elements of a great epic, but fails to become one due almost completely to the weirdly anemic sense of passionless, momentumless, drearily uninspired film-making.

It took the last 30 minutes for me to fully appreciate this film. That's because the first 105 minutes are very, very slow. If it weren't for the wonderfully rich visuals, I might not have stuck with this story. Obviously, I'm glad I did because the story snapped out of its doldrums and, at the same time, wrapped up everything nicely leaving the viewer (at least, me) very satisfied. But - a warning - as mentioned, you must have a lot of patience to make it to that rewarding conclusion.

I just marveled at the cinematography, the great sets, the muted and beautiful colors that seem to be the trademark of these magnificently-filmed "Merchant and Ivory movies." I am speaking of course, of James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, director and producer, respectively. That's a team that will sorely missed by we fans of their films. (Merchant died recently, making this the last of their collaborations.) That collaboration includes writer Kazuo Ishiguro who wrote this movie. These three guys all worked on "The Remains Of The Day," one of my all-time favorite movies and books.

This Ishiguro story is set in mid-to-late '30s in Shanghai. Ralph Fiennes plays a blind American, "Todd Jackson," an ex-diplomat who wants to get away from politics and run the nightclub of his dreams. He has the whole place mapped out in his head. Natasha Richardson ("Countess Sofia Belinskya") is a high-class escort-service-type woman working in a lower-class bar who unselfishly sacrifices her dignity to help support her unappreciative family. Todd and Sofia meet one day in that bar, he is extremely impressed with her, and later hires her to run his new place, called The White Countess, once it's opened. Along the way, Todd meets a Japanese man "Mr. Matsuda," who we find out isn't the altogether nice guy we thought he was, as it's revealed trouble always follows him.

In the end, this drama comes to life as the Japanese overrun the city and everyone flees for their life. Sofia's family tries to leave without her. The countess desperately goes after them because that family includes her precious young daughter. Fiennes realizes, at the last minute, he doesn't want to live life without Sofia and she he tries to find her among all the chaos. It's a very suspenseful ending.

In you enjoy classy-looking films, character that you wind up caring about, and a drama that is rewarding, this is a film not to miss. I'm afraid it didn't get much notice, at least not like the other Merchant-Ivory films, which is a shame. The last I saw, this was mixed in with garbage films selling for $2 at the video store. What a shame!

This is an underrated, under-publicized and beautiful movie.