Off the Beaten Path
To film
The Painted Veil, Edward Norton
went to the end of the earth and back again in
China. Here, he
retraces his steps.
. Photograph by Glen
Wilson.
"I think you'll like
Shanghai. It's quite exciting. Lots of
dancing," says bacteriologist Dr. Walter Fane (played by Edward
Norton) to his new but soon-to-become-adulterous wife, Kitty Fane
(Naomi Watts), in this month's hauntingly beautiful film
The Painted Veil. Based on the 1925 novel
by Somerset Maugham, the film involves a journey from
London to
Shanghai, where, in an act of vengeance over his wife's infidelity,
Dr. Fane accepts a job in a remote Chinese village ravaged by a
deadly cholera epidemic - and forces his wife to accompany him.
Surrounded by both natural splendor and death, the couple travel
from emotional isolation to forgiveness and, finally, to love.
The journey that two-time
Oscar nominee Norton took to get the film
made was equally long and arduous. After falling for screenwriter
Ron Nyswaner's adaptation of the novel in 1999, he came aboard as
producer and also took on the lead role. But it wasn't until 2004
that Norton was joined by Watts as costar and coproducer, and the
two - along with a crew of 40 westerners and 260 Chinese, a dozen
translators, and 70 work trucks - were off to China. Not merely to
Shanghai and
Beijing, but to the awe-inspiring terrain and timeless
villages deep inside the mainland. Searching for the perfect
settings for the film, location scouts traveled more than 5,000
miles before finally settling on Guilin, a city in the province of
Guangxi, and the more primitive village of Huang Yao. One of the
world's most picturesque places, Guilin sits along the Li River,
surrounded by majestic, verdant hills; it's the perfect spot, since
The Painted Veil is the first Western film
about China that has been allowed to shoot on location in a very
long time.