The Painted Veil is an Edward Norton vehicle, and that’s OK. The movie inspired little interest in me in the book from which it’s adapted, but the film engaged us both. Some balance between the personal story of their relationship (from deeply frosty to fiery, and parts in between) and the development of Chinese nationalism in the mid-1920s. The relationship, though, takes center stage. To its credit, the film doesn’t take the easy way out at the end.
The Chinese countryside plays a supporting role: it’s a pretty place in this movie, despite the cholera epidemic (!) which drives the plot forward. I simultaneously wondered whether it was easy to find places in China that looked as if 80 years had not passed or it was hard to find a place that was not despoiled (environmentally) by the fervent rush for progress which marks most of the tales of China seen in the American reports of the last decade or so.
Metacritic score of 70…works for me.
Note: I still wonder whether Matthew Hurst is a big Edward Norton fan, or he has simply found interesting data points around Norton’s recent movies.