Der bunte Schleier

The Painted Veil is my favorite Somerset Maugham novel so I was concerned about how much justice could be done to this hauntingly beautiful story of revenge, love and redemption. Is it possible to take a masterpiece and make a decent film out of it in Hollywood? Apparently yes! Could the movie have been better - absolutely, but does it get the job done well? I'd say yes.

Ed Norton is Walter - a bacteriologist stationed in Shangai. In Londn he mets and falls in love with the beautiful Kitty (Naomi Watts), hasty marriage and honeymoon in Venice later they are both in China. He is busy - she is bored. And what better way to relieve boredom than an extramarital affair with Charlie - the philandering consular official (Liev Schrieber)? But Walter discovers the affair and decides to volunteer to a cholera stricken province and take Kitty with him. Charlie was never serious anyway so off they go into the jaws of death. In the cholera infested back of beyond Walter and Kitty discover more about each other than they did in many months of marriage. A mutual respect grows into something else but it is a cholera infested region after all. So the tale must have a tragic ending and it does. But it leaves one with a sense of relief as the camera finally moves away from the oppressive dark tones and into light.

The movie has beautiful performances by Ed Norton and Ms. Watts. His serious, then almost sinister, then enlighetened Walter is the perfect foil to her luminous, wicked and then vulnerable Kitty. Liev Schrieber is good in the brief role as Charlie and all the supporting cast is very good indeed. The locale is stunning and the mood is brilliantly captured in the dark, the shadows and moments of light.

Are there Hollywood moments? Of course there are, mostly during the growing attraction between the lead pair there are the clichéd moments of "intoxication", his looking suddenly more attractive and youthful, her moments with the orphanage kids. But none of it is over the top. The movie is full of mood, sensuous beauty and emotion. I enjoyed the film and I think Mr. Maugham is there somewhere nodding his head in approval at a job well done.

John Curran's nearly pitch perfect film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's "The Painted Veil" begins slowly and patiently, with leisurely flashbacks that elliptically bring us to a singularly absurd predicament: circa 1925, a British doctor (Edward Norton in his second romantic lead following "The Illusionist") has brought his lovely young wife (an entrancing Naomi Watts) into the middle of a Chinese cholera epidemic purely out of spite. It's a wickedly clever little set-up that becomes increasingly more complex and absorbing.

The note-perfect and delicately layered performances of Watts and Norton, two thespians typically acclaimed for their edgy and independent work and playing against type, are anchored with the literary genius of Maugham and Curran's keen eye and steady hand behind the camera. It's all perfectly accentuated by the brilliantly subversive music score by Alexandre Desplat (doing his best work since "Birth"). These cleverly designed elements coalesce deliciously into a fully fleshed-out whole, and allow "The Painted Veil" to grow in your mind organically and slowly slip under your skin like an infectious disease.

Ron Nyswaner does a great job of translating Maugham's writing to the screen. Virtually nothing is lost. That keen British wit, the dramatic sense of irony, and the sincere exploration of many heady themes including loveless marriages, adultery, imperialism, charity, religion, and redemption are all captured beautifully by director Curran and screenwriter Nyswaner. Watts and Norton are given plenty to chew on, not only great lines, but great scenes full of lush scenery, and beautiful and textured visual details that serve as perfect backdrops for their complex and unpredictable relationship.

Back in the heyday of Merchant-Ivory, it seemed like this type of literary minded period-piece was a dime a dozen. There hasn't been a hugely successful film of this type since 1996's "The English Patient." We haven't seen a worthwhile film in this genre since Neil Jordon's underrated "The End of the Affair" in 1999, which not coincidentally was an adaptation of one of the great novels from Maugham's fellow Brit and contemporary, Graham Greene, and addressed many of the same themes.

What "The Painted Veil" lacks in epic sweep it makes up for in scores with its nuanced performances and subversive outlook on romance and true love. Its finely landscaped images of China are transfixing, but it's the look on Norton's face when he realizes the woman his wife has become, and the glimmer of a tear forming in Watts' eye when she realizes what she's done that will haunt you.

What an excellent movie - really exceptional. Norton and Watts are so believable and the supporting cast are amazing as well. Sets, scenery, music, and costumes are dead on. Character development and evolution make these characters well rounded and memorable.

The story is so realistic that it makes one wonder if it isn't based in fact rather than fiction, and the feelings of the time (hatred for imperialistic foreigners) is documented accurately. The only negative thing I can say is that there was a point when editing needed to be tighter because the movie dragged a bit in defining Kitty's boredom and isolation. The audience got the message much earlier. But this was only a brief irritation because the movie was so fascinating.

The movie does deviate from the novel in that the ending has changed somewhat, but few people have probably read this novel and most won't even notice. It's a longer than average movie and will probably play better in Europe than America. But for the thinking crowd, it's an absolute must see.

When I was nearly eighteen, I married. To the prettiest girl at art college. Lack of confidence vanished with virginity. I loved her with unbearable, blinding intensity. We painted each other with unquenchable desire. What could go wrong?

Our film's title goes back to a stanza:

"Lift not the painted veil which those who live

Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,

And it but mimic all we would believe"

Shelley's poem furnishes the title of Somerset Maugham's oriental love story. That classic, set in the 1920s, has three times been made a film. Our latest offering comes like five-year incense from Sinophile Edward Norton, with screenwriter Ron Nyswaner (Philadelphia) and producer Sara Colleton.

Two people, whose characters are a million miles apart, wed in London. They travel to Hong Kong. Suddenly they can no longer play the game that society has set them. Facing their own true natures is a journey of discovery greater than geographical distance. Visually and emotionally restrained (given the passions and breath-taking scenery involved) the Painted Veil shines with intellectual integrity. If only you can get excited enough about it.

Brilliant bacteriologist Walter Fane (Edward Norton) only occasionally gives way to anything as unscientific as showing feelings. Kitty (Naomi Watts) is warm and natural, but marries Walter more because it seems like a sensible thing to do than for any over-riding love. She enjoys tennis and nice things. Walter derides such superficialities. And Walter speaks only when he "has something to say." Kitty has an affair with government official Charlie Townsend, a charming and seductive married man who "made a science of popularity." Walter correctly labels her as stupid to think he wouldn't find out. Their trip to a cholera-infested village of Mei-tan-fu, a professional honour for Walter, becomes his journey of revenge.

Walter's sense of superiority is impenetrable. Even though he vomits at his first sight of suffering, he finds a way to save much of the village from disease. Kitty is meanwhile wasting away through loneliness. They have yet to discover the real vibrancy behind each other's mask. As they attempt to do so, the film challengingly asserts the contradiction of sexual versus spiritual love.

An emotionally unintelligent man discovering the tenderness and complexity of another human being, and a good (yet fairly shallow) woman appreciating her own potential - and the value of another's great mind. But the symbol of the 'veil' goes much further. Norton says he wanted to 'lift the veil' on issues facing China in the 1920s. "If you're going to make a film set in China during the period, I think there's got to be a reason for doing it other than the inherent romanticism of the location."

To Kitty, the work of the nuns (headed by Mother Superior, Diana Rigg) is laudable, especially with orphans. Walter, on the other hand, points out that they also pay parents for their children so as to indoctrinate them with Catholicism. Every Westerner is a colonialist of some sort, fuelling increasing resentment with the locals. Walter, carrying his torch of medicine rather than the fire of armaments, believes he is 'neutral'. He is somehow 'above' the armed soldiers that he relies on. Yet his rationalism is shallow, limited to believing that if only people would embrace Western ways they would have it so much easier.

Kitty stays with Walter initially out of 'duty' but comes to question it when the Mother Superior says, "Duty is only washing one's hands when they are dirty." The philosophical challenge, echoed from Maugham, is whether duty and love can become one. This is the central tenet of the film. Walter, indubitably, seems to be following a higher 'duty' in saving people from cholera. Yet it is the experiencing of love in one form or another that gives meaning and fulfilment. That 'love' must be genuine but also under the domain of duty - else it leads astray. Walter's initial 'love' is respectful, exact - and only with the lights switched off. Kitty's is that of a gifted dilettante.

The performances are finely chiselled. Watts combines convincing sensuality and tenderness yet still gives her character room to express deep emotion later on. When Walter discovers her sexual liaison with Charles (played by Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts' real-life partner), he goes into heartless-bastard-mode. Norton (who majored in history at Yale) produces a convincing portrait of someone who is sharply intelligent and as precise as a scalpel. His painful awakening to the fact that humans are more than complex microbes is superbly judged. Polar opposites of smooth sleaze-bag Charles and straight-as-a-die Walter are movingly adjudicated by Deputy Commissioner Waddington (Toby Jones). He has more insight into relationships than the rest of them put together, yet are we misled by his persona? "He is a good man," says the young Chinese woman that we saw him tussling naked and unashamed with moments earlier.

Going beyond what we believe another to be, whether we put them on a pedestal or in derision, may only be the first stage. Being away from familiar surroundings leaves nothing to fall back on. No painted veil.

This adaptation takes excusable liberties with the plot. It is true to the spirit of Shelley's poem (I had to look it up to fully appreciate that, I think). It is a finely observed colonial-era drama that holds attention with a subdued dignity, quietly resisting the enticement to do a Merchant and Ivory. To the casual viewer it sometimes hangs between wasted opportunity and insipidness. But its themes are lovingly executed with skill and exactitude.

My marriage lasted precisely one year. We both decided to travel. If we had been isolated in a distant country like the protagonists of this film, we may have discovered a more genuine love. Or killed each other. Unlike this sumptuous historical and emotional travelogue, the games we play don't always paint a pretty picture.

Interestingly, I got to this film not because of its two leads but because of its director. The man is John Curran, an independent director with a profound vision who is riding the right path and if he continues to do so, I dare to say he'll be among the big names soon. That's, of course, if he decides to work more constantly. He's done three full-length features that have garnered awards and recognition.

I've seen two of them; "We don't live here anymore" and now "The Painted Veil", the life of a couple in the 1920's, where a man came to a woman after knowing her for a day and said: "I came here to ask you to marry me". This is what Dr. Walter Fane (Edward Norton) proposes to Kitty (Naomi Watts); and she agrees, of course because it's a chance to get as far away from her parents as possible. Fane is a microbiologist or something like it, however she doesn't care. He takes her to Shanghai, where she meets Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber).

Something awful and predictable happens. It hurts a character and the viewer and it lets Curran to deal with a theme he knows well; adultery. Anyway, this is just the beginning of a silent suffering and of a silent life with limited conversations. But strong conversations, coming from Ron Nyswaner's intelligent script, based on W. Somerset Maugham's novel. Overlooked by the Academy, Nyswaner's work allows the characters to expose their feelings mercilessly; which is exactly the way John Curran makes films.

In "We don't live here anymore" the images were violent. "Do you absolutely despise me?", Kitty asks Walter. "No, I despise myself for allowing myself to love you once", he answers. In scenes like this one, Curran's close-ups are daring; but he's also able to measure his shots to give us some beautiful landscapes. Going back to Nyswaner, he achieves the turn of the story perfectly, providing us a big gallery of characters (Toby Jones as an unpredictable neighbor, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang as a harsh Chinese colonel, Diana Rigg as a caring nun) as he deals with strong issues like terminal diseases and social differences.

Sometimes recognized as the most intelligent man in the industry, a versatile and underrated actor, Norton produced the movie (in which he's absolutely brilliant, with the English accent included) and made sure Naomi Watts was in it…Every time she appears on screen in a film she looks different; although we know it's her. Her range is more surprising by the day. Not so long ago, Watts said in an interview that she was tired of dramatic roles where she had to cry all the time; she wanted to get a big paycheck in "some stupid romantic comedy". Even so, she produced Curran's previous movie (where she was also great) and co-produced this one: she must care a little bit.

Ultimately, with all the things it covers, "The Painted Veil" is a beautiful story about love found, as in discovered; a story about regret and the purest forgiveness. I also want to comment that after watching two of his pieces, Curran has something going on with streets in last scenes.