Review of The Garden of Evening Mists

The book is award-winning material which the film completely dumb-downed for the most part, choosing to focus on symbolic imagery in a highly superficial manner without attempting to showcase the rich complexities of the story. The are many missed opportunities to showcase the cross-cultural highlights - from the Japanese art & heritage to what Malaya was really like at that time. There were powerful flashbacks such as the most beautiful memory the protagonist had of a Kyoto garden - you would be hard-pressed to see any depiction of it save for a few mentions despite this being a strong counterpoint to the darker memories the protaganist had. There is one scene at a local coffee shop which really gave a true vibe of Old Malaya but the film mostly misses the diversely strong cultures of Malaysians, the history of highland plantations & the Indian community, the Orang Asli who to this day inhabit the Highlands (& had a bigger role to play in the book), the familial ties and subversive support for Communists were missing (save for a few gangster-like scenes of a few Commies), and even details such as famous Cameron Highlands scones or the iconic Smokehouse are glaringly absent. At a book event, the author himself said the script was returned with extremely critical feedback on his first review. I suppose there's consolation that it might've been much worse had he not intervened.