the painted veil

this film was directed by john curran, who hasn’t directed many films but one I recognized (and love) is we don’t live here anymore. if you haven’t seen it, you MUST. moving on…the painted veil is a drama told through a slightly fragmented temporality. we begin with kitty (naomi watts) and husband walter, (edward norton) as they are traveling through the wilderness of china in the 1920s. through flashbacks, we watch their relationship develop from their first meeting two years prior to their current hostility-filled interactions. we quickly find that kitty had an affair with charlie (leiv schreiber) that walter found out about, and as punishment, offers kitty an ultimatum of a messy divorce or her accompanying him to a cholera-infested part of china where he has volunteered to help. once we are caught up to the present, the film follows a fairly straightforward and linear plot. walter is working to prevent the spread of more cholera to the small town they are staying in by not allowing the villagers to use the water near where they bury their dead. the villagers view this is an act of colonialism in that a foreigner is taking their water away from him, regardless of his motivations. to remedy this, he finds a way to reroute water from a clean source and appeases the villagers. kitty also feels useless as she does nothing all day and decides she would like to help in the orphanage, assisting the nuns. once both have comfortably established themselves into the village life and begin to rebuild their broken relationship, more people infected by cholera show up at the village looking for help and incite a fight that threatens to infect many people and effectively ruin all the progress walter and kitty have made. we are told repeatedly that walter and kitty’s motivations to help this village are pure and that regardless of their upper class status in london, they do not expect special treatment in china. however, watts still rides around the village in a carriage/chair carried by chinese servants and they have a chinese housekeeper living in their home. walter at one point even criticizes the motivations of the nuns working in the orphanage, suggesting that their selfless deed has an underlying purpose of creating more catholics. the same criticism could be pointed at walter and kitty because regardless of how much they seem to assimilate into the culture, they still appear as rich outsiders offering their knowledge of proper health and betterment. i do not think we are meant to read them as colonial outsiders because we are aligned with their narrative and sympathize with their various hardships. i do find that this is somewhat undercut by the only other white character, waddington (toby jones, who recently played truman capote in infamous). When kitty and walter meet waddington, he is already living in the village, seemingly coexisting with the chinese people. when kitty goes to see him one night, she sees a chinese woman in his hut and we are meant to assume (as kitty does) that she is a prostitute of some sort. however, later we find that they are in a relationship and this makes walter and kitty’s existence within the village seem more unnatural and penetrating. kitty even comments that she didn’t realize waddington was actually “fond” of this woman. but for the most part, i think we are supposed to see kitty and walter as generally good people who come to recognize and accept their faults as human beings. i won’t give away the ending because it’s one of those…so go see it. it’s a good film, and it’s beautifully shot and all that. and as expected, watts and norton are excellent too.

check out the trailer