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Love in the time of cholera

Not by the book, but excellent regardless
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 16th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
The first difficult steps. Edward Norton and Naomi Watts in The Painted Veil.
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Fans of the film versions of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel The Painted Veil are undoubtedly shocked when they read the book. Far from a romance, Maugham’s novel is a psychologically acute portrait of a modern young woman, Kitty Fane, who stumbles toward maturity and self-awareness after a life of trivial pursuits.
The Painted Veil

Directed by John Curran
With Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Diana Rigg and Toby Jones

There are actions Kitty takes in the novel that, while wholly understandable (that is to say, honestly human), might strike the average filmgoer as heartless or distasteful. She would quickly become an unsympathetic protagonist on the big screen. And so the two major film adaptations of the novel have felt it necessary to transform Maugham’s tale into a story of love discarded rather than rediscovered. Happily, with both Richard Boleslawski’s 1934 version and John Curran’s current one, literary purism can be damned.
Boleslawski’s film, with Greta Garbo as Kitty (or “Katrin,” as the Scandinavian diva could never be mistaken for an upper middle class London lass), is a beautifully crafted and controlled melodrama in which Garbo gives one of her finest performances (the great Boleslawski was a student of Stanislavsky’s and actually was one of the first to bring the master’s “method” to the States). His Painted Veil takes far more liberties with Maugham, yet manages to contain the work’s essence.
Curran’s film is, on many levels, even more exquisite. His leisurely, purposeful pacing, which allows his actors time to delve into their characters’ emotional complexity, along with the cinematography of Stuart Dryburgh and a score by Alexandre Desplat, creates a ravishing, as well as moving, experience.
To escape her stifling family life in South Kensington, young Kitty (Naomi Watts) hastily agrees to wed a soft-spoken bacteriologist, Walter Fane (Edward Norton), who is smitten with her. As Walter works for the British government in Shanghai (Hong Kong in the novel), the couple are quickly off to China before giving themselves a chance to know each other.
Within the British colony in Shanghai, Kitty allows herself to be seduced by a high commissioner, Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber), and conducts an illicit affair behind Walter’s back. But then Walter finds out.
Shattered by this betrayal, Walter gives Kitty an ultimatum: She can either risk scandal by his filing for a divorce against her, or she can accompany him into the Chinese interior, to a city that has been struck by a cholera epidemic. Discovering that her lover, Townsend, has only been toying with her, she agrees to join Walter, both damaged souls seemingly having chosen cholera as a suicidal game of Russian roulette.
The journey deep within China becomes a metaphor for the pair’s deep retreat within themselves. Their relationship has become a cultivated estrangement; the best they manage to muster toward each other is a courteous scorn. Yet the grim discipline demanded of them by the epidemic, and the daily reminder of life’s brevity, forces Kitty and Walter to reflect upon their actions. And so the story becomes for them one of discovering their capacity for forgiveness and love. Death, however, stalks close by.
As Boleslawski managed with his actors, Curran coaxes fine performances from his cast. Watts’ Kitty expertly makes the transition from frivolity to gravitas. While the spiritual attainment of the novel’s Kitty is missing from the script, Watts nonetheless communicates the great depth of Kitty’s “awakening.” She continues to be one of the best actors working in Hollywood.
Norton’s performance is no less masterful. His shy, soulful Walter becomes a wound’s scab — a man so sunk in melancholy and self-loathing as to become dead to himself. Norton’s Walter never veers toward self-pity, but manfully “gets on” with things, though with the saddest imaginable eyes.
There is excellent support from Schreiber as the slick Townsend, Diana Rigg as a nun toiling amid the cholera outbreak, and Toby Jones as Waddington, a British agent who becomes the Fanes’ protector.
Curran cleverly condenses passages from the novel into simple shots. An entire scene in which Kitty churlishly mocks the homely sacred art of the plague city’s convent is quickly captured by a close-up of a rudely carved Madonna figure with a childishly painted face, which tells us all we need to know about the humble nuns’ lives versus the world-weary Kitty’s.
It’s too often the case that a film cannot stand in comparison with its original source material. Although far from being by the book, Curran’s riff on Maugham’s novel is a work of art in its own right.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


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