I'll lay down the math. 10 points for Edward Norton, 10 points for the sometimes mediocre but still artistic cinematography, and then 10 more for the couple of scenes that demanded emotional involvement. The Painted Veil meaning: At a wedding, the veil is white, which represents the innocence and purity of the wearer. As the title of the novel suggests, the veil is painted, which implies that the wearer is not innocent any more. The novel takes a dig at how our society and the people that live in it are tainted. ADULTERY, REDEMPTION AND CHOLERA DISEASE IN CHINA. Overall: 4.7 (out of 5.0) I devoured this book. Kitty is so petty and unlikeable at the beginning, but I cheered her on at the end. It’s a well-paced character study that’s lively and even funny at times. Kitty has long known that her marriage with Walter was a mistake. She glances at the pictures of her mother and father in the living room; he a little wizened man with tired eyes, and she a thin, angular, harsh woman. Kitty is not particularly close to either of them. Walter's dying words are "It was the dog that died." This is a reference to the poem "An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog" by Oliver Goldsmith. There are various interpretations to be had of the significance of this. The poem tells of a man who is bitten by a mad dog. Yet it is not the man who dies but the dog. In the novel, I believe that Walter sees himself as the mad dog who had dragged Kitty into a life-threatening situation, (foreshadowed by Maugham's prologue) biting her in a way, expecting that it would be a death sentence for her. Instead it was Walter who would pass, thus the irony. (Here is a link to the poem)

Kitty Fane is a beautiful, vain, upper-class British woman unhappily married to Walter Fane, a bacteriologist working in Hong Kong. She is conducting an affair with Charles Townsend, the Assistant Colonial Secretary, and the two are in her room when the knobs to her door mysteriously turn from the outside.Plot summary: ABritish medical doctor fightsacholera epidemic inasmall Chinese village, while being trapped at home inaloveless marriage to an unfaithful wife. Prior to departing for China, he asks her: " How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode." Walter and Kitty barely spoke as they travelled by chair through the inscrutable Chinese hinterland. How frighteningly yellow were the faces that surrounded them! But such a relief to be met by a white man on their arrival! Even if he was bald and ugly.

Writing was Maugham’s true vocation. For ten years before his first success, he almost literally starved while pouring out novels and plays. His innate empathy and ability to get strangers to reveal intimate stories suggest that he had many qualities that would have made him a first class general practitioner or psychiatrist. As it was his training was not wasted as there are medical themes running through many of his stories. The Painted Veilis a fine example. Kitty Fane ruthlessly ridicules her husband, Dr. Walter Fane, to her lover as she dreams of marrying this cad she can't see is playing her. Though the husband Walter loves Kitty still, after he finds out of the affair, his jaundiced need to get even goads him into taking her on his mission to rural China, into the heart of the cholera epidemic. Per favore vattene - singhiozzò - Questa è l'unica cosa che puoi fare per me adesso. Ti odio e ti disprezzo. Walter valeva dieci volte più di te e io ero troppo stupida per accorgermene. Va' via. Va' via. Kitty Fane moved to Hong Kong with her husband, Walter. An incredibly intelligent man, Walter is also socially awkward. He loves Kitty, but is rather unapproachable and aloof. Eventually, Walter grew on me, but he isn't the type of "warm-fuzzy" character that you bond with immediately. From the start, it is made very clear that he is head-over-heels in love with his wife.

Acum lacrimile îi şiroiau pe faţa ei bună, de casnică” (p.198). Să ne uităm și în original: „Now the tears were pouring down her kind, homely face”. Kitty, lounging easily in her chair, looked at him with smiling eyes. She turned her wedding-ring round and round her finger. I know this is harsh, but I've heard such good things about The Painted Veil, and I felt like it didn't deliver. The book might be a classic, but the film seems highly overrated to me. In the words of Mark Twain: “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it”