The Painted Veil – Elegance in Vain

Based on Somerset Maugham’s novel by the same name, The Painted Veil, directed by John Curran and adapted by Ron Nyswaner is a more elegant version of the original book. It is this elegance, an overdose of it rather, that proves to be the movie’s undoing. This is not to say it is a bad movie. It is a good movie, and people who see the movie without reading the book would vouch for this. It is only when you compare the two that the frailty of the movie stands out.

Starring Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Liev Schreiber, Toby Jones, and Diana Rigg, The Painted Veil deals with the lives of Kitty Fane (Naomi Watts) and her doctor-scientist husband (Edward Norton), their initially droll and placid expatriate life in Shanghai, with the ravages of cholera and the revolution in the backdrop.

The movie is shot at the same pace as the 80 chapters in the book. Kitty and Walter cross paths at a party in England, after which Walter, enamored by her, calls on her frequently. He is in love with her, and therefore proposes to her, only to be rebuffed. She rebuffs him because while she is flighty and full of life, Walter is her diametric opposite, just how you would expect a bacteriologist to be.

However, when she overhears her mother talk happily of her sister’s engagement, Kitty accepts Walter’s offer of marriage, more as a way of finding social balance than real love. After the marriage they move to Shanghai, where she promptly starts a torrid affair by Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber). Her husband, Walter, comes to know of it and issues her an ultimatum.

The ultimatum causes Kitty to unhappily follow her husband to the Chinese village he is working at. There she meets Paddington, a lonely bureaucrat (Toby Jones), who introduces her to the wonders of the purple haze of opium. And ironically, it is the opium that gives Kitty an understanding of her husband’s work, and with it, brings to her life a sense of purpose. She also begins to feel for her husband, as he is busy running around saving lives, and herself signs up as volunteer at an orphanage run by the mother superior (Diana Rigg).

The book had to it a raw tonality that portrayed Kitty as a heroine with ample shades of grey. The movie, on the other hand, is a glossed-over version of the book, and in the process of the glossing over, the rawness of Kitty’s character is lost. Though the performance by all the actors is commendable, the gloss factor finally gives you the feeling that the movie could have achieved way more than it currently does.