The Painted Veil
Dir: John Curran
2006
***
2006’s The Painted Veil is the third film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s 1925 novel, following the 1934 film starring Greta Garbo and Herbert Marshall and a 1957 version called The Seventh Sin with Bill Travers and Eleanor Parker. Prior to 1999, producer Sara Colleton sought to develop a script for a new adaptation. The script was frequently redrafted, being written to be close to the source material, to take liberties with the source material, and to create a feminist version of the main character. Edward Norton became involved with the project almost from the beginning. Norton explained his attraction to the project, "It's very much a story about people getting beyond the worst in themselves and figuring out how to look at each other honestly, forgive each other for their failings and get to a better place... When I read it, I was very affected by it because in it I saw my own failings.” He suggested casting Naomi Watts for the role of Kitty, which did not happen until Watts proved herself a bankable star with her performances in Mulholland Drive and 21 Grams. When Watts joined the project, she recommended director John Curran, with whom she had collaborated on the 2004 film We Don't Live Here Anymore. The director's expertise with We Don't Live Here Anymore convinced Watts and Norton that he would be capable of depicting the dysfunctional relationship in The Painted Veil. The project began development at producers Bob Yari and Mark Gordon's Stratus Film Company, but when Stratus executive Mark Gill left to start Warner Independent Pictures, he brought the project with him. Gill began production of the film in partnership with Yari. Gill was later fired before the film's completion by Warner Bros. production president Jeff Robinov, which later led to the film's marketing difficulties. Yari and Warner Independent Pictures collaborated with a Chinese partner who was granted approval over the script and the finished film. When the Chinese production company reviewed the film, it was unhappy with the depiction of the Chinese uprising and the cholera victims, requesting that the scenes be revised. Norton and Curran expressed concerns that their studio accepted the censorship too quickly, with the director threatening to remove his name from the film. Their pressure resulted in limiting cuts from the film to only 38 seconds' worth, which I find surprising as the Chinese don’t come out of the film well. On a brief trip back to London, earnest, bookish bacteriologist Walter Fane (Edward Norton) is dazzled by Kitty Garstin (Naomi Watts), a vain London socialite. He proposes the day after meeting her and she accepts but only to get as far away from her mother as possible. The couple honeymoon in Venice before going on to Walter's medical post in Shanghai, where he is stationed in a government lab studying infectious diseases. They find themselves ill-suited, with Kitty much more interested in parties and the social life of the British expatriates. Kitty meets Charles Townsend (Liev Schreiber), a married British vice consul, and the two engage in a clandestine affair. When Walter discovers his wife's infidelity, he seeks to punish her by threatening to divorce her on the grounds of adultery, if she doesn't accompany him to a small village in a remote area of China. He has volunteered to treat victims of an unchecked cholera epidemic sweeping through the area. Kitty begs to be allowed to divorce him quietly, but he refuses, stating "Why should I put myself through the smallest trouble for you?" She hopes Townsend will leave his wife Dorothy and marry her. When she proposes this possibility to Charles, he declines to accept, despite earlier claiming to love Kitty. She is compelled to travel to the mountainous inland region with her husband. They embark upon an arduous, two-week-long overland journey, which would be considerably faster and much easier if they traveled by river, but Walter is determined to make Kitty as unhappy and uncomfortable as possible. Upon their arrival in Mei-tan-fu, she is distressed to discover they will be living in near-squalor, far removed from everyone except their cheerful neighbor Waddington (Toby Jones), a British deputy commissioner living with Wan Xi (Lu Yan), a young Chinese woman, in relative opulence. Walter and Kitty barely speak to each other and, except for a cook and a Chinese soldier assigned to guard her, she is alone for long hours. After visiting an orphanage run by a group of French nuns, Kitty volunteers her services, and she is assigned to work in the music room. She is surprised to learn from the Mother Superior that her husband loves children, especially babies. In this setting, she begins to see him in a new light as she learns what a selfless and caring person he can be. When he sees her with the children, he in turn realizes she is not the shallow, selfish person he thought her to be. As Walter's anger and Kitty's unhappiness subside, their marriage begins to blossom in the midst of the epidemic crisis. She soon learns she is pregnant, but is unsure who the father is. Walter – in love with Kitty again – assures her it doesn't matter. The cholera epidemic takes many victims. As Walter and the locals are starting to get it under control, due to his importation of clean water through a system of aqueducts (as the local people did not understand water-borne infectious disease) cholera-carrying refugees from elsewhere pour into the area, forcing Walter to set up a camp outside town. He contracts the disease and Kitty lovingly nurses him, but he dies, and she is devastated. Bereft and pregnant, she leaves China. Five years later, Kitty appears well-dressed and happy in London shopping with her young son Walter. They meet Townsend by chance on the street, and he suggests that Kitty meet with him. Asking young Walter his age, he realizes from the reply that he might be the boy's father. Kitty rejects his overtures and walks away. When her son asks who Townsend is, she replies "No one important, darling". Screenwriter Ron Nyswaner and Norton collaborated on the screenplay for the film. The 1925 novel by author W. Somerset Maugham was considered one-dimensional, so Norton altered the story so the character Walter Fane had a more enhanced role. The character was also rewritten to make his peace with his wife Kitty, leading to them falling in love with each other. Norton explained, "I like to think that we didn't change the book so much as liberate it. We just imagined it on a slightly bigger scale, and made external some of what is internal in the novel." Norton described the novel as "almost unremittingly bleak" and believed that the author had thought that British colonials were unlikely to change. The actor explained of the change to the story, "I went on the assumption that if you were willing to allow Walter and Kitty to grow... you had the potential for a love story that was both tragic and meaningful." Norton considered The Painted Veil to be in the spirit of films like Out of Africa and The English Patient, seeing it as "rooted in really looking at the way that men and women hurt each other". I think he got this very wrong. Director John Curran suggested setting the film during 1925, when the events of the Chinese nationalist movement were taking place. Norton, who had studied Chinese history at Yale University, agreed with the suggestion. To detail scenes from the time period, Curran, Norton, and Nyswaner relied on excerpts from historian Jonathan Spence's 1969 book To Change China, which covered the inept efforts of Western advisers during these years. Norton described the character Walter Fane served as "the proxy for the arrogance of Western rationalism", explaining about Fane's confusion at the lack of gratitude for his help, "Walter means well, but he's the folly of empire, and that adds a whole new dimension to what happens in the story. It's a metaphor for the way empires get crushed." I believe that in concentrating far too much on the changes they all forgot about the integrity of the novel. This should have been a bleak tale – the bleaker the better. I didn’t much care for Kitty from the beginning (Watts plays annoying very well) and I was never convinced by Norton’s initial desire for her or his subsequent hate of her. I felt nothing for the characters and thought there was a total lack of chemistry between them. The star of the show is the great Chinese landscapes and I feel that people remember these the most and kid themselves that it is a great film because of them. Most of the film takes place inside a studio on a set that is clearly new but made to look old – it is unconvincing just as much as the performances. There just isn’t any flesh on the bone.