Raise
the Red Lantern (1991)
Chinese
Title: 大紅燈籠高高掛
Translation:
Red Lanterns Hang High
Starring:
Gong Li, Ma Jingwu, He Saifei, Cao Cui-Fen, Zhou Qi, Kong Lin, Jin Shu-Yuan,
Chu Xiao
Director:
Zhang Yimou
This is one of those all-time classics of Chinese cinema that I could have rented at Blockbuster during the late 90s, but never did. I'm pretty sure I would have dismissed it as "slow" had I watched it as an HK action junkie teen. The film is well shot and well acted, but the pacing is very deliberate and that may turn some viewers off.
The film tells the story of Songlian (Gong Li), a
young woman who is forced to drop out of a university following her father's
untimely death. At her stepmother's behest, she decides to get married,
becoming the 4th wife of a wealthy man named Chen (Ma Jingwu). She quickly
finds herself in competition with wife #3 (He Sai-Fei, whose credits
include Lust, Caution and something called Double
Gunned Man with a False Face), a former Opera singer, for her new
husband's attentions. Wife #2, Zhuoyun (Cao Cui-Fen), is initially sympathetic
toward Songlian, while wife #1 (Jin Shuyuan) has more or less resigned herself
to her fate: she's probably too old for her husband to show interest in
anymore. Complicating matters is the fact that Songlian's maid, Yan'er (Kong
Lin, who has a supporting role in Ride On), is jealous
because she thought she would become wife
#4.
Raise the
Red Lantern is interesting in that it concerns itself purely
with the internal politics of the Chen family, specifically with the
interactions of the wives, especially #2, 3 and 4. In a particularly bold
movie, even the husband, for whom all the hub-bub is about, is portrayed in an
almost purely abstract manner: Zhang Yimou never once gives us a close-up of Ma
Jingwu's face. There is no dialog to really explain what Mr.
Chen does or how he makes his money, nor is there any indication about how
external events may or may not be affecting his business--the film is set
around 1920, so that would place it during the Warlord Era. Zhang Yimou did
something similar in Shanghai Triad, but to a lesser effect. It
works here because the sexual politics of a polygamous family is the focus and
is interesting in its own right, as opposed watching the machinations of a Triad
family two degrees removed from the main action.
The movie suggests that polygamy in China may be good
for the husband, but it is anything but for the wives. There's a lot of
scheming and backbiting going on here, and these women are more than willing to
do horrible things to each other to guarantee their strength over the
household. Moreover, it's clear that once a woman's beauty and childbearing
prowess has faded, she will receive little love and attention from her husband,
who'll be too busy lavishing his love on his younger wives. If she's lucky,
she'll have a son to occasionally keep her company. Songlian can see all of
this from the outset and, after her initial disgust of "the game,"
she tries to play it to her advantage, after which she simply removes herself
from the equation altogether. But that brings with it loneliness, despair and
ultimately insanity. As with most Zhang Yimou films, the technical aspects are
fine and the acting is good, but it is pretty depressing, especially in the
last 20 minutes or so.
Shanghai Triad
(1995)
Chinese Title: 搖呀搖！搖到外婆橋
Translation: Shake! Shake! Shake Grandma to the Bridge[1]
Starring: Gong Li, Li Bao-Tian, Li Xuejian, Sun Chun,
Wang Xiao-Xiao, Chen Shu, Fu Biao, Liu Jiang, Jiang Bao-Ying
Director: Zhang Yimou
I recall seeing
this film for rent at Blockbuster back in the late 1990s, although I never
picked it up. That applies to most Asian films in the Foreign Film section
there; if it was action and was Asian, it usually went into the
Action-Adventure section. The movies that I was mature enough at the time to
appreciate would have been action movies; teenage me wasn't ready for drama.
But now I have to pick up the slack.
The film is told
from the point of view of a 14-year-old country boy named Tang Shuisheng (Wang
Xiao-Xiao), who has been sent by his family Shanghai to work with his uncle.
His uncle, Liu Er (Li Xujian, of The Emperor and the Assassin), is
a servant for the biggest crime boss in Shanghai, Boss Tang (Li Bao-Tian,
of Judou and Raise the Red Lantern). Shuisheng is
sent to be the personal servant of Boss Tang's current squeeze, a nightclub
singer named Bijou (Gong Li, of Dragon Chronicles and Curse
of the Golden Flower). Bijou is beautiful and talented, but she's also
stuck-up, shallow and greedy. She also deals with her lover's constant absence
by carrying on an affair with Song (Sun Chun, of New Police Story and 1911),
Tang's right-hand man. At one point, there's an assassination attempt on Boss
Tang and Tang flees with his entourage to an island in order to recover and
regroup. Stuff...
At the Kung Fu
Fandom forum, we once had a Mutual Movie Review series, which started in 2015.
The second theme chosen was "Triad Movies." User Secret Executioner (known
at the time as Godfrey Ho Worshipper), reviewed this film and gave it an
overwhelmingly negative evalutation. Said he:
Most of the action occurs off-screen and you only get some sound effects
and the aftermath of a fight. Otherwise, you get a lot of singing/dancing
numbers in the first half and a lot of plotting and talk in the second half -
when they go hide away on some island. hkcinemagic puts this in the drama and
triad categories, and it's way more of a boring drama with some triads mixed
in...My opinion on this though ? Well... It's DREADFUL. I thought Robo
Vampire and OUATIC were the worst Asian movies I'd see this year, but nope
this one is even worse with NOTHING to save (even the other two films I
mentionned had something to enjoy like a cheap Robocop rip-off or a few nice
action sequences)...
Fellow user and
Hong Kong cinema expert Shawn McKenna offered the following counterpoint:
Now Shanghai Triad is a weaker film in the oeuvre of
Zhang Yimou and is generally considered so by most critics. It came at a time
where after he was suspended and had confrontations over several of his past
films with the Chinese censors (remember this is something he could have went
to jail for and possibly never directed again.) But it is in no way one of the
worst films ever.* When you are viewing a film there are many different
attributes it can be judged on. To paraphrase David Bordwell: Film is a
photographic art. Film is a narrative art. Film is a performing art. Film is a
pictorial art. Film is an audiovisual art. On many of these facets Shanghai
Triad is actually successful at. The cinematography is well done with
beautiful composition, flourishes etc...
My opinions about
this are that it does make for an interesting companion piece with The
Road Home, which I watched the same day. It was neat to contrast the
pastoral simplicity of that film with the complexities of modern society (and
organized crime), which is driven in some part by greed and materialism. That
said, the characters in The Road Home were far more likable
and relatable than the characters here. But then again, that was
sorta the point.
My qualms about
this film is that the film is called Shanghai Triad, but the story
is told from the point of view of a character two degrees removed from the
actual triad activities. Shuisheng is a country hick with no idea at how the
modern world function, what technological marvels (by 1930s standards) adorn
it, and barely any idea of what his actual place in it is. His boss, Bijou, is
essentially a gangster's moll, but even she isn't directly involved in that
lifestyle (it's considered bad luck for a Triad's wife or lover to be present
during male discussions). That means that most of the actual story is told from
a distance too far to become truly involved with. And yes, the occasional
moments of violence happen offscreen, or far enough away (as Shuisheng
witnesses it) that there is no visceral impact.
The best moments
from a storytelling perspective occur at the end, when we finally learn who
Boss Tang truly is. It's almost a twist to learn just how ruthless and vicious
the man is, compared to how we saw him in earlier scenes. Beyond that, the film
has some good performances and the expected Zhang Yimou technical viruosity,
from the costumes to the cinematography. In the end, Shanghai Triad is
too distant to enjoy, but too attractive on the surface to simply discard.
The
Road Home (1999)
Chinese
Title: 我的父親母親
Translation:
My Father and Mother
Starring:
Zhang Ziyi, Sun Hong-Lei, Zheng Hao, Zhao Yu-Lian, Li Bin, Chang Gui-Fa
Director:
Zhang Yimou
Leo Tolstoy reported said, "All great literature
is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to
town." In the case of this film, a man comes back to
town after having journeyed to the big city to make his fortune. That is the
start of this simple family drama about a guy remembering the story of how his
parents met following the death of his father, whose own story is Premise #2 in
Tolstoy's quotation.
Luo Yusheng (Sun Honglei, of Seven Swords)
was raised in a small mountain village whose economy revolved around pastoral
activities. He went into the city, like many of the youngsters of the newer
generations, to find his fortune, but has returned upon learning that his
father has passed on. His mother, Zhao Di (Zhao Yulian), wants to perform a
local burial tradition in which the coffin is carried from the place of death
(his body is at a hospital in a neighboring city) to the place of burial, so
that his father's spirit will be able "find his way home." The main
problem is that most of the local adult men are old, as the young men have all
left for China's urban centers. As Yusheng ponders what to do, he tells the
story of his parents' meeting some 40 years prior.
This was Zhang Ziyi's first film, and if you think
she's beautiful, then you should see this as she practically carries the vast
bulk of the film, which is full of loving close-ups of her (pretty) face. The
film is a very simple tale of a woman's devotion and loyalty to the man she
loves. She has no ambitions of her own, she just loves her husband and spent
her life dedicated to him and supporting him as the only teacher in the village
for four decades. It's the sort of love story that might not be well received
by contemporary, more entitled (and dare I say "narcissistic")
audiences, what with their "I'm marrying myself to show my self-love"
weddings and what not. Zhao Di (played in her youth by Ziyi) finds her love of
self through love of others, be it her blind mother or her husband.
There are secondary themes of the slow death of old
traditions as the younger generations seek out the urban centers; respect for
one's elders and filial piety; the honor that we people owe to the teaching
profession; and some oblique references to the effects of the Cultural
Revolution on local cultures. But they are handled subtlely in what is a very understated
film.
As it goes, this currently has the IMDB rating of 7.8.
That puts it--if you ignore his Olympics work and appearances in
documentaries--at #4 among Zhang Yimou's work among mainstream audiences (as
going by the IMDB); To Live would be #1 (8.3); Raise
the Red Lantern #2 (8.1); and Hero #3 (7.9).
[1] - The title refers to
a lullaby that is mentioned in the film.
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