Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by EBerlin (A) on September 18, 2007 at 19:27:16

In Reply to: RE: Memoirs of a Geisha posted by Alex S on September 18, 2007 at 04:13:01

...in a case like this where the subject is so essentially Japanese, and considering that there are a great many Japanese actresses of great skill and experience, it simply wasn't necessary to go so far as to cast all three of these key roles with Chinese players.

It's not so much fundamentally unethical as, to me, simply unwise, a bit foolish, and unnecessarily insenitive. Can anyone doubt Japan has an incredibly rich cinema history. Although there may be countless films never exported to the west, China's entering the world of universal cinema at least *appears* a relatively recent phenomenon, though this is likely due to the constraining effect of enforced "communist" ideology on creative artists. I strongly suspect there are a great many more Japanese films than Chinese that sensitive international viewers would say are great films.

(I put "communist" in quotes because I remain unconvinced that there has ever been a truly communist regime anywhere in the world. But that's another discussion entirely and has nothing to do with movies.)