The White Countess

The dreams of two unlikely strangers form the basis for this sophisticated drama – one of a world that has been lost and the other of a world that has yet to be found.

Snowflakes fall mysteriously in a grand ballroom somewhere in Russia, echoed in the mind of a beautiful girl in a slum district of Shanghai 1936. Natasha Richardson is a countess, fleeing the Bolshevik revolution, making a living any way she can to support her family. This means working in shady dance halls as a taxi-dancer (and presumably, occasionally, as a prostitute). Her five family members (all older except for a young daughter) loathe the shame she brings on them but have no other means of support.

Ralph Fiennes is a disillusioned US diplomat. He has helped the formation of the League of Nations, is a successful business man, and a hero Chinese nationalists, but has seen all the best efforts to have people live in peace come to nought. Shanghai is full of political tensions – just before the Sino-Japanese war. Fiennes finds solace drinking in lowlife bars and avoiding what he sees as the hypocrisy of those that hold him in such high regard.

A vast amount of talent has been poured into this film: it is the final collaboration of Merchant and Ivory (Ismael Merchant died shortly before final production), the screenplay is by the award winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro (who worked with them on Remains of the Day), the other crew are top notch, and the cast also includes both Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave. Yet there is no easy conclusion when asking if it is a major triumph.

The film has a pervading sense of the unexplained, which continues for its whole length (over two hours), so piecing it together is not easy. The politics of the time and place are probably not familiar to most audiences, and the bewildering array of nationalities does not help. Ishiguru's talent is for transcending the material content and taking us into the world of ideas, but it needs most of our concentration to accept the material idea of Shanghai 1936 (which, although painstakingly recreated, often feels like a film set inhabited by a well-known English cast). Not surprisingly, there may be little energy left over for more cerebral imaginings. Fiennes is an American, Richardson and the Redgraves are Russian – even before we meet the Jewish neighbour, the French Consul, a Japanese nightlife connoisseur - and none of the main characters (or actors) are Chinese. But then the ideas are not particularly Chinese either – Shanghai is nothing more than Ishiguro's canvas.

Prising out the dreams gives us some clues. Richardson (Sofia) is no tart-with-a-heart. Their Jewish neighbour, also a refugee, has fled such horrors that mere verbal insults (the worst he has to suffer in Shanghai) fall off him like a deaf man. But Sofia's family are less self-assured. They dream of a decent existence, but Sofia has the greatest moral fibre, in spite of her job. She receives the respects of a Russian Prince – now working as a porter. She warns Fiennes (Jackson) – who is also blind – of a hidden danger and gains his lasting respect.

Jackson has noticed that in the dance halls there are no politics. He longs for a nightclub where people of any political persuasion can relax and mingle freely. Like Sofia, he is tarnished by all the rules of the real world, but his aspirations are higher than his outward lifestyle and the 'bigger picture' of those that would judge him.

Early in the film, Sofia says to a co-worker, "All of us here have to fall in love from time to time to feed our children," yet the film turns many ideas of 'love' on their head before it reaches its (thankfully) emotionally resounding climax. Equally ironically, Jackson speaks of the "vague promise of an intimate encounter" (in an ideal nightclub) when the reality is that merely the vague dream of any intimacy of feeling is the most either he or Sofia feel they could even hope for.

As a meditation on the commonality of death and sex, of the impotent struggle of goodness and taste against the wars that mankind seems addicted to, The White Countess has much to offer. The image of Fiennes in overcoat and bow-tie, calmly pouring brandy as the bombs fall around him, sticks in the mind like the scream of a child. Director James Ivory could have underscored such moments to much greater effect than allowing them to be swallowed in a complex story and an unfamiliar period of history. Fiennes' character seeks some political tension that stops short of violence, but his character – and the film – often lack that very quality.

What seems at first like instant noodles, badly re-heated, holds more sustenance than most will sadly give this film credit for; and if it is a triumph for the Merchant Ivory / Isuguro team, it is one, like its characters and their dreams, so heavily flawed that the aficionados who draw anything from it may well be accused of an over-active imagination.

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

If there ever was a film with the right elements in it, this was it. After all, James Ivory was directing and the screen play by Kazuo Ishiguro, who had worked with the director before, to much better results in "The Remains of the Day". Alas, this film has a flat feeling, in sharp contrast with the other films by Mr. Ivory.

We are taken to the Shanghai of the thirties which was a city with a large international community. Among them, the story finds the impoverished Russian aristocrats that are living in need. Horror of horrors, Countess Sofia is forced to work in a dive, often frequented by low life characters. Although it's left to our imagination, could this poor aristocrat be also one of "those women"?

It is there where Todd Jackson, a blind American with a lot of influence in the right circles, meets Sofia and decides to ask her to be the hostess for the new night club he wants to start. Into this picture walks a Japanese business man, Mr. Matsuda, who befriends Jackson. Matsuda has a hidden agenda, as he wants to mix different groups of opposing sides at night spot.

The Japanese invasion puts an end to Jackson's dreams. At the same time, Sofia is able to get the needed amount of money for she and the family to go to Hong Kong. The only problem is that Olga, the family matriarch has another idea in mind: Sofia must stay behind! The problem with the film is that there is not enough tension, or passion, in these people on the screen. In a way, this movie doesn't convince us these characters are real.

The mostly English cast does what it can, but they have done much better before. The magnificent Vanessa Redgrave has nothing to do, which is the ultimate sin of the movie. Ralph Fiennes' Jackson is not one of the best roles he's ever played. For that matter, Natasha Richardson, with the phony Russian accent, doesn't add anything to the story.

In a way, the movie feels empty. We can't even imagine an Ivory-Merchant production this shabby before. Maybe the problem lies with the untimely death of Mr. Merchant. The film needed some editing and trimming because with a running time of 138 minutes, is just too long.

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.