'Geisha' Is Beautiful but Lacks Novel's Depth

Summary

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"Memoirs of a Geisha" is cast in the swooning lyric-epic tradition of "Dr. Zhivago," with every moment intricately designed to massage the eye, caress the ear and take the breath away.

Imagine the fabled "ice house" scene in "Zhivago," and you've got the template for all 144 minutes of "Geisha," each one of them adrift in white snow, pink cherry blossoms, red silk kimonos, cobalt eyes, pancake faces and a hundred other aesthetic frills to die for.

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'Geisha' Is Beautiful but Lacks Novel's Depth

But for all its well-tended garden of sensory delights, the movie never quite achieves the balance of physical scope and emotional grandeur that might have swept it to the head of its very old- school class: the tradit...

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