The White Countess

Greetings again from the darkness. One can always count on a Merchant/Ivory film to appear soft and flowing on the outside and explosive on the inside with a pinch of unrequited love on the side. The misleading smile on Ralph Fiennes face and the gentleness of Natasha Richardson mask the inner turmoil only to themselves.

Fiennes plays Todd Jackson, an infamous former U.S. diplomat who worked wonders with the Chinese government. Sadly his life took an awful turn when he was blinded and his daughter killed during a tram bombing. His life a mess, Jackson "sees" his idea for an entertainment establishment in his head. Once he has secured the funding, he selects his "centerpiece" ... former Russian Countess Sophie (Richardson). Their business relationship is highly successful but does nothing to help Richardson's torturous family situation. Watching their worlds collide, with an assist from warring nations is a slow and painful ride.

Richardson is simply terrific and elegant as Sophie. Her scenes with Fiennes and her scenes with her family are magnificent and powerful. The only thing preventing the film from being truly top notch is the over-reliance on subtlety in the Fiennes/Richardson relationship.

Outstanding support work is provided by Hiroyoki Sanada as the mysterious Mr. Matsuda, but the real treat for film lovers is the opportunity to see Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave together on screen. As is customary for Merchant/Ivory, the direction is a bit heavy-handed and dialog extremely limiting, but the strong performances allow the film to be very solid and watchable.

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.

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.

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.

The team of Ismail Merchant, James Ivory, and Kazuo Ishiguro will unfortunately never offer another special film. THE WHITE COUNTESS is all the more meaningful as it was their last effort. While many viewers find this 138 minute film boring and plot less, there is a flavor here that could only be captured by this team.

Shanghai, 1936. While the disruptions in global existence created by World War I have created fearful evacuees of many countries to the old city of Shanghai, those émigrés survive by any means possible. Todd Jackson (Ralph Fiennes) is an American diplomat who lost his wife, daughter, and eyesight in an accident and lives his blind existence visiting the music bars for solace. His dream is to own a music/dance/entertainment club and his fortune is changed by winning at horse racing. He encounters Countess Sofia Belinskya (Natasha Richardson), a woman of Russian royalty who has fled Russia with the fall of the Czars with her daughter Katya (Madeleine Daly), and her aunts Princess Vera Belinskya (Vanessa Redgrave) and Olga Belinskya (Lynn Redgrave) and Greshenka (Madeleine Potter) who live in a tiny loathsome apartment and are dependent entirely upon Sofia's income as a dance hostess in a seedy club. In their building lives Mr. Feinstein (Allan Corduner) and his Jewish family who likewise have sought asylum in Shanghai and who proffers kindness to Sofia's plight.

Jackson's winnings afford him the luxury of opening 'The White Countess' club at the encouragement of his Japanese friend Mr. Matsuda (Hiroyuki Sanada) and realizing Sofia's dignity and needs, Jackson makes Sofia the sophisticated hostess of his club. The dance of pre-World War II grows from a distant echo into a reality with the insidious growth in numbers of Japanese soldiers and soon the truth of the Japanese imperialism intentions becomes evident. The émigrés begin to escape Shanghai and in the midst of Sofia's family's escape to Hong Kong her aunts make it known that Sofia must stay in Shanghai: her work as a dance hall hostess would smear their reputation as they return to a position of royalty! Jackson and Feinstein intervene to prevent Sofia's loss of her daughter and the slowly evolving relationship between Jackson and Sofia is clarified.

There is plenty of plot for the active mind in this story, and in the style of Merchant Ivory productions the story unfolds gradually, layer upon layer, in a study of atmosphere embroidered by words. The setting is stunningly beautiful to see, and the unfolding of the story is as painfully slow as the life of displaced people in a foreign city can be. Times change, moods alter, events metamorphose and at the end of the film the events of the story are well braided. Natasha Richardson is radiant as Sofia, a woman of style who graciously does what it takes to survive. The Redgrave sisters exude the embarrassment of being bereft of their regal breeding in the squalor of Shanghai. Fiennes is a broken man with so much pride that he fears vulnerability. Sanada embodies the elegance and grace with which the Japanese adroitly usurped China into their Great Plan.

Yes, the film could use some editing, but one can understand why editor John David Allen would have had difficulty in cutting the beauty of the cinematography of Christopher Doyle and Yiu-Fai Lai capturing the costumes of John Bright and the sets of Andrew Sanders and Qi Bian. This film is more an atmosphere than story and requires the viewer to submit to the manner of relating the tale. But in the end it is a beautiful work and sadly the last of a series of great films by an incomparable team. Grady Harp