Rob Marshall’s lavish adaptation of Arthur Golden’s bestseller “Memoirs of a Geisha” is a beautiful movie. Few features this year have been so lavish, so lush, so visually spectacular and musically rapturous. From John Williams' exquisite score, to Don Beebe’s stirring cinematography, to John Myhre’s fantastical production design, the look of Marshall’s epic can’t help but stir the senses and boggle the mind.

Too bad it’s not really all that good, then we might actually be talking about something worthwhile.

There is a hole at the center of this expensive endeavor. For the first time that I can recall, I did not like the beautiful Chinese actress Ziyi Zhang. So good in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” Oscar-worthy in both “House of Flying Daggers” and “2046,” this woman is a talent like no other. Her future is unlimited. Her skills as an actress are unquestioned. Her complete failure to connect with her character here is sadly depressing.

The reality, though, is that Zhang doesn’t have a character to play, screenwriter Robin Swicord leaving her completely empty-handed by making the only fascinating people in the movie the supporting players and not the lead. How this happened is beyond me. This is “Memoirs of a Geisha,” not “Memoirs of the People Standing Next to the Geisha,” and that geisha of the title just happens to be the one Zhang is supposed to be portraying.

Sold into slavery as a child and raised to be the greatest geisha Japan has ever known, the memory of a small kindness Sayuri (Zhang) is gifted with as a young girl by a mysterious benefactor, known only as The Chairman (Ken Watanabe), helps drive her desire to succeed. In fact, this meeting completely changes her life, giving Sayuri focus and allowing her to get over her separation from her sister and the death of both parents. More so, by becoming a renowned geisha she may come into contact with The Chairman again, her heart beholden to him ever since that single kindness.

With the assistance of Mameha (Michelle Yeoh), her training goes fantastically, Sayuri’s skills growing to the point all around her can’t help but take notice. That includes her most heated rival, celebrated geisha Hatsumomo (Gong Li), a woman who takes it upon herself to crush this newcomer before the girl’s fame exceeds even her own. But there is more riding on this rivalry then just pride. There is money, there is power and, most of all, there is the one thing forbidden to all geisha: Love.

Much happens to Sayuri throughout her travails including the return of her beloved Chairman, the auctioning of her most carnal possession and a pesky little thing now known as World War II. Most of it is, on the surface, interesting, but interesting doesn’t matter if the people at the center of all the chaos are nothing more than rigidly dignified and emotionally closed off wet noodles. I realize this is a separate culture from our own, a society I know nothing about, but learning should be half the fun and, if anything, make the romantically tragic drama at the story’s core even more affecting.

What I started to discover, however, is that I was more intimately interested in the documentary-like pieces of the tale and not the fictional human ones. Sayuri’s training is unbelievably fascinating. Everything a girl must learn, all she must teach herself to succeed as a geisha, really blows the mind, and watching this little lithe uncoordinated girl become a beguilingly confident elegant woman is absolutely extraordinary. But Marshall blows it, reducing the best part of the movie into a less than thirty-minute montage that’s over before it even has a chance to begin. Worse, it all culminates in a solo dance number that should be the film’s highlight. It isn’t, not by a long shot, and despite the stunning camerawork and some grandly mellifluous lighting (love the blue snow) I was actually relived to see it end.

Not everything here is a disappointment, and I’m also not about to join in the critical pile-up complaining about three Chinese women playing Japanese geisha. To me a great performance is a great performance, and while I can understand someone’s displeasure at not seeing their ethnicity portrayed exactly the way they want it to I can’t fault the producers for hiring the best talent available. Should Meryl Streep not be allowed to play a Frenchwoman (or a Pole, or a German, etc. etc.) just because she’s from the United States? For that matter, should Russell Crowe be allowed to portray an American icon like James ‘Gentleman Jim’ Braddock or a larger-than-life Roman gladiator just because he’s from Australia?

In the case of Li, I’m even thankful that they decided to cast her in the part, China’s greatest living actress (a woman who by all rights should be considered a national treasure) delivering a performance of such complex ferocity I hope Oscar is watching. With the rest of the movie literally burning down around her in flames, Li commands the attention. In fact, when she finally walks away into that proverbial goodnight the rest of the piece never recovers and I found myself sitting in the theater wishing I could see a drama about her instead of the piece of disappointing tripe I was stuck with here.

In the end, if you don’t care about the main character you don’t care about the picture. Swicord doesn’t care about her, leaving all the interesting moments to the people surrounding her. Marshall doesn’t care about her, lighting and dressing the woman fabulously yet still focusing the majority of his camera’s attentions on everyone else. Thusly, I don’t care about her, could care less if Sayuri finally finds true love. That means I don’t like the movie, and if I ever write my own memoirs about my life reviewing film I’ll make sure and say it again.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)