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One of author W. Somerset Maugham's favorite themes was just that realization of true worth in mannered Englishmen who sojourned in Asian cultures where their "civilized backgrounds did not work, and their true mettle was painfully exposed.
His "The Painted Veil, set in 1925, was one such scenario. As a film, its mood is not of this time but it is for those of any age who occasionally feel not of this time.
Its style, reminiscent of films from the '30s to the '50s, is not for the short-attention-span moviegoer. Yet it is one that director John Curran has adroitly imbued with visual devices that stimulate the senses in the modern vein.
Of superlative narrative quality and respectable screen adaptation, it's a fine, deeply felt tale of a man and woman whose reserved British culture is preventing their realization of their true love for each other until perhaps too late.
Upper-class Kitty (Naomi Watts), reminded mercilessly by nagging mom and dad that she, in her 20s, is getting precariously close to spinsterhood, considers the marriage proposal of serious bacteriologist Dr. Walter Fane (Edward Norton) shortly after a matchmaking party "unwanted by her" at her parents' London home. He's infatuated by her beauty and self-assurance; she's totally indifferent to him.
But she says yes. Anything, after all, to escape the drudgery of her life.
Joining Walter in Shanghai on his civil service assignment, Kitty's indifference to him manifests in an immediate affair with suave, married English Vice Consul Charles Townsend (Liev Schreiber).
When Walter learns of her infidelity, he becomes sulky and mean-tempered. In a self-destructive move, he accepts a mission as doctor in Mei-tan-fu, an isolated village afflicted by a cholera epidemic. The job, of course, is perilous. Faced with joining him or divorce "and all that a divorce would mean in her situation" Kitty ruefully joins him.
Aided by the sympathy of burned-out local Deputy Commissioner Waddington (Toby Jones), who harbors a Chinese mistress in his opium den, plus the great-hearted association of the Mother Superior (Diana Rigg) of a French convent, and a dutiful Chinese army officer, Kitty and Walter cope with death all around them.
But by being physically united in this milieu of cultural alienation and mortal sickness, their true selves are surfacing. They are learning about and feeling toward each other.
Cholera, unsurprisingly, is going to be part of this to the end. Tapping a single ominous note of menace now here, now there, in a sickened adult, a child, a scene of a corpse, the film depicts the water-borne epidemic laying an emotional weight between Walter and Kitty.
It sets up an opaqueness of spirit that blocks their vision of each other, allowing only severe misgiving, if not open bitterness, to stifle any understanding between them. Only when outer circumstances change will inner connections begin resonating.
That there is something bigger than they, something that sings only at the deepest level, is profoundly portrayed by many ethereally majestic panoramas of the mountains and mist, nature's way of belittling human trivia and awakening the soul.
A very moving film, it evokes private reflection.
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