KnotMissPriceless Why so much hype?

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

tieman64 This is a very brief review of "Red Sorghum" (1987), "Ju Dou" (1990), "Raise the Red Lantern" (1991), "The Story of Qiu Ju" (1992) and "To Live" (1994), five films by Zhang Yimou. Each film stars actress Gong Li, each works as a companion-piece to the other, and each deals almost exclusively with the oppression of women within early 20th century China.Zhang's debut, "Red Sorghum" stars Gong Li as Young Nine, a peasant who is sold to a wealthy leper. Things only get worse for Nine, who must fend off a series of rapists, mean men and the Japanese Army itself, all the while running a successful winery. Throughout the film, Zhang uses boxes, deep reds and tight squares to amplify Nine's sexist surroundings. Indeed, the film opens with Nine literally forced into a box, a social reality which she spends the film attempting to break free of or even transform. For Zhang, China wasn't "disrupted" by the Japanese invasion, it was hell long before. Like most of Zhang's films during this period, "Sorghum" sketches the cultural and socioeconomic conditions which spurred China, with hopeful arms, toward Maoism.Zhang's next film, "Ju Dou", covers similar material. Here Gong Li plays Ju Dou, a woman sold to a violent oaf ("When I buy an animal I treat it as I wish!") who owns a fabric dying establishment. After her husband is crippled, Ju Dou forges a relationship with Yang Jinshan, a relative. When Ju Dou and Jinshan have a child together, the kid grows up into a mean brute. Like "Sorghum", "Ju Duo" is a tragedy obsessed with rich reds, boxes and patriarchal violence. Whilst its plot superficially echoes Zhang's own adulterous, then-scandalous affair with Gong Li, Zhang seems more interested in the way Ju Dou and Jinshan hide their illicit affair from other villagers. For Zhang, the duo's tacit submission to social mores merely validates the notion that their love is scandalous and so merely validates the symbolic power of the crippled patriarch, a power which Ju Dou's son must – as per his mother's very own actions – thereby respect and avenge.The arbitrary nature of power, and how this power is always "symbolic" and always unconsciously maintained (via ritual, personal belief and shared delusions), is itself the obsession of Zhang's "Raise the Red Lantern". Here Gong Li again plays a woman sold to a wealthy man. This man has several other wives, all of whom begin to violently fight one another in an attempt to win the patriarch's adoration. "Is it the fate of women to become concubines?" a character asks, pointing to the film's deft critique of feudal relations. Zhang's first masterpiece, "Lantern" is again obsessed with reds, boxes and sequestered women, though here Zhang replaces the voluptuous colours, camera work and widescreen Cinemascopes of his previous films with something more restrained. Because of this, Zhang's conveying of claustrophobia and oppression, of mind and spirit pushed to madness, feels all the more powerful.Next came Zhang's "The Story of Qiu Ju". A near masterpiece, it stars Gong Li as Qui Ju, a peasant farmer who embarks on a quest to avenge her husband, who's had his crotch kicked in by a village leader. More emasculated by this attack than her own husband, Qui Ju's quest takes her all across China, dealing with a Chinese bureaucracy which seems quite helpful, polite and even rational. And yet still this bureaucracy does not please Qiu Ju. It thinks in terms of commodities, monetary recompense and punishment, whilst Qiu Ju (like Zhang Yimou himself, whose previous films were banned, without explanation, by Chinese authorities) seems more interested in acquiring a "shuafa", a simple explanation and apology. By the film's end, both the "primitive justice" of rural China and the "civilized justice" of modern China are simultaneously mocked, praised and shown to be thoroughly incompatible. Zhang's first "neo-realist" film, "Qiu Ju" was shot with hidden cameras, amateur actors, and so is filled with subtle observations, cruel ironies and beautiful sketches of peasant life.One of Zhang's finest films, "To Live" followed. It stars Gong Li as Jiazhen, the wife of a wealthy man (Ge You) who is addicted to gambling. When this gambling results in the family losing its mansions, riches and status, Jiazhen and her husband are forced onto the streets. Ironically, this set-back saves the family; the Cultural Revolution arrives, and with China's shift to nascent communism, all wealthy land owners are demonised, attacked and killed.Unlike most films which tackle life under Mao's Great Leap Forward, "To Live" carefully juggles the good and bad of what was essentially a nation shirking off feudalism, monarchs, uniting and then trying, clumsily, to cook up some form of egalitarian society. This quest results in all manners of contradictions and socio-political paradoxes: community, solidarity and a simple life save our heroes, but their world is one of paranoia, danger, and in which everyone and everything is accused of being "reactionary". The film ends with Jiazhen's daughter dying, a death which is the result of both unchecked consumption (a doctor dies gobbling food) and communist "reorganisation" (all competent doctors have been killed/jailed for being counter-revolutionary). This jab at communism got the film banned in China (further highlighting the insecurity of the regime). Ironically, Maoism saw massive positive health care reformations, and saw an improvement in mortality rates which at times surpassed even then contemporary Britain and parts of America (life expectancy doubled from 32 years in the 1940s to 65 years in the 1970s). But such things don't concern Zhang. Spanning decades, "To Live" is mostly a broad account of life, love, loss and growth (the personal and political), all unfolding upon a canvas that is devastatingly cruel. Significantly, the film's title is both adjectival and a command; this is "what life is", but one must nevertheless "always push on". Gong Li and Ge You in particular are excellent.7.9/10 - See "Yellow Earth" (1984).

Eternality Ju Dou is Zhang Yimou's first Palme d'Or (Cannes) nominated film. It is also sandwiched between two celebrated films of his – Red Sorghum (1987) and Raise the Red Lantern (1991) – that won the Golden Bear (Berlin) and Silver Lion (Venice) respectively. Perhaps the most famous and acclaimed mainland Chinese filmmaker known to the West, Zhang took Chinese cinema to a new level of prominence in the early 1990s, spearheading the Fifth Generation movement together with a few other directors, most notably with Chen Kaige, who made Yellow Earth (1985) and Farewell, My Concubine (1993).Ju Dou is also the name of the lead character played by Gong Li. She is a woman in poverty who is bought by a rich old man who runs a dye mill together with his poor nephew, Tianqing. She is forced to marry him and bear a son. However, the old man is impotent and physically and sexually abuses Ju Dou every night because she could not give him a son. She seeks solace in Tianqing. Slowly, their relationship turns into an extramarital affair, leading to Ju Dou's pregnancy and birth of a newborn son, which she manages to convince the old man is his.Steeped in Chinese cultural values and tradition, Zhang's film is like a classical Greek tragedy set in 1920s rural China. The poor are exploited by the rich and capable, and it is only a matter of time that something tragic would happen. The son begins to call the old man his father, who becomes paralyzed after a fall, and later suffers a bizarre death. The son grows up to be a quiet and violent person, and appears to lay the blame on Tianqing for impregnating his mother, and causing his rightful father anguish.In the film's most bitterly ironic sequence, Ju Dou and Tianqing are forced to follow a Chinese custom – to weep, call out to their dead family member, and try to stop the coffin for 49 times. This sequence is edited in such a way that the scenes repeat themselves, highlighting the raw emotions of the two secret lovers and asking painfully of the question: What's worse than mourning for a loved one? To be forced to mourn for someone whom you do not love.Zhang's use of vibrant colors is astonishing, and has been an integral part of his visual style over the last two decades. Huge pieces of cloth dyed in red or yellow are suspended on a rung and left out to dry. These not only add to the visual beauty of the film but also take on a symbolistic meaning, representing themes of love (or lust), and angst. When a character dies, he drowns in red dye, as yards of red cloth drop and conceal him, like the drawing of stage curtains on a performer after a show has finished.Together with minimalist music and beautiful, composed shots of rural life, Zhang has created a film that within its picturesque landscape lies a haunting circular tragedy. It is a very bleak portrait of peasantry life ruined by the strict adherence to cultural traditions. It is also an indirect but potent critique of China's Cultural Revolution with the old man taking on the symbol of Maoist brutality and injustice, and "his" son as the symbol of the Red Guard, brainwashed from young to retaliate against the non-Maoist ideology – the right to individual freedom – as embraced by Ju Dou and Tianqing, but very sadly, cruelly denied.SCORE: 8.5/10 (www.filmnomenon.blogspot.com) All rights reserved!

tedg Readers send me recommendations of films that use architecture cinematically. Water, smoke, fire (fireworks), are the usual supplements to built space. To that I've recently added cloth, based on a reviewing of "Brother Sun." This was recommended.Its an early, intimate film from the man who later brought us epics that sometimes work with space: flying leaves, smoke, fabric, knives. He's quite committed to cinematic architecture, space. I appreciate it. In this case, the project is small, with few aspirations. The story is a familiar one (two men, a woman and a shared child), and really quite ordinary except that the acting is good. The real center of this is the house.Its a combination of residence for the two men and woman, and a business where the three dye fabric and hang it in long bolts to dry. The place is wonderfully, gently photographed in places, and that is to be expected. The way the thing is staged is very typical of Chinese films of the era: every shot is carefully arranged with the surrounding space emphasized with color, planes and light. Its not dynamic, but very effective. I include this in my list of "folding' effects that bring the viewer into the world of the film. Making space, always impinges on our space.But there's another effect at work here. I like it when this filmmaker uses the environment as indication. This is also typically Chinese, but usually has to do with political events or natural disasters, of some such. Here, when the cousin and virgin wife do have their first sex, a long newly strip of fabric, perhaps 35 feet long, makes a waterfall of red collapse into a pool of red dye. Its a remarkably powerful image capturing blood, a sort of gravity of sex (both senses), indeed an inevitability. Its the entire tragedy in one scene, the human copulation just off screen.Later, this pool would swallow both the men, one after another. The transgressor will end up literally in this pool of red, with the very same inevitable, continuing drape falling over him. Its not the cleverest or most subtle working of architectural space into cloth and thence into nearly a character, one that indicates and has agency, both as the force that starts the tragedy and ends it.Its worth it. See it before you see that later epic excesses.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

lastliberal Gong Li is just about one of the most beautiful actresses in the world today. It is hard to believe that she has been acting for 20 years.This is one of her earlier works, and it is an excellent example of her talent. It is also one of the early films for Yimou Zhang, who also directed Gong Li in Curse of the Golden Flower. He shows the promise of a great director in this film.There is not much that is pleasant her. Ju Dou (Gong Li) is bought by an evil man who has beaten two wives to death for not bearing him a son. She is beaten mercilessly and he has constant sex with her to have a son.The problem is not his wives, but him, and she has a son secretly with his nephew (Baotian Li). It saves her life, but matters continue to get more and more complicated until the final tragedy.One of the really interesting features of the film is the Chinese funeral ritual.The film is a great example of the early work of two great talents, but do not think that early means weak, as they were bother strong from the beginning.