Reportedly the biggest-budget Chinese film ever made, Zhang Yimou's (張藝謀) garishly familiar melodrama-cum-martial arts extravaganza Curse of the Golden Flower (滿城盡帶黃金甲) is the ultimate cinematic representation of flamboyance and excess. Led by Chow Yun-fat (周潤發) and Gong Li (鞏俐), the lavish period drama tells of a quasi-Shakespearean familial war in a weighty manner.
The story begins with an Emperor (played by Chow) of a fictional kingdom in 10th-century China during the Tang Dynasty marching home shortly before the Double Ninth festival (重陽節), which is, in part, a celebration of family. The Emperor and Empress' (played by Gong) marriage is overshadowed by homicidal intrigue as she discovers the medicine her husband orders her to take every two hours contains a poisonous fungus that will soon drive her insane.
Distraught with the end of her affair with stepson Crown Prince Xiang (Liu Ye), who is also romantically involved with the imperial doctor's daughter (we later find out the young lovers are in fact half blood siblings), the Empress quietly cooks up a coup with her loyal son Prince Jei (Jay Chou) as the imperial family members follow their paths of destruction in court intrigue, incest, murder and massacre.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF BVI
Based on Chinese dramatist Cao Yu's (曹禺) 1934 play Thunderstorm (雷雨), Curse of the Golden Flower can be seen as a hyper-ostentatious version of the director's 1991 masterpiece Raise the Red Lantern (大紅燈籠高高掛) as both center on the repression of women in patriarchal society. Yet, while a married woman's stifled life is poetically and acutely captured in the former, the latter portrays the human drama with a mannered theatricality.
The opening sequence heralds a promising epic with masterfully executed cross-cut shots between scores of young maids preparing themselves for the Emperor's arrival [representing women] and the pounding footfalls of the army and its entourage [representing men]. The magnificent on-screen presences of Chow and Gong cocooned in opulent gold quickly emerge from the labyrinth of courtyards and halls, mesmerizing the audience with forceful intensity.
But as the film progress, the fatal flaw of a tell-don't-show narrative gradually looms large as we see two of the greatest film stars in the Chinese-speaking world struggle with the confinement of line reading rather than unleashing their talents in subtle physical performances.
Oddly enough, the over-the-top performances do seem to have found a niche in Zhang's grand opera in which love and death are played out at fever pitch in an unparalleled visual pageantry. Visually spectacular, the film creates a novel imperial palace compared to other Chinese period dramas. Swirls of primary colors shine through the glass in pillars, windows and walls, while kaleidoscopic patterns of flowers saturate the immaculate interiors of the palace. The ornate sets and feverish visual design alone are enough to make this film a peculiar work of cinematic art with a kitsch sensibility.
The final epic battle between imperial factions seems to be born out of the desire to equal the high digital standards set by the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In the dehumanized CGI battle sequences, thunderous armies pose in perfect symmetry on millions of bright yellow chrysanthemums covering the imperial courtyard. It is again a stunning visual presentation in abstract form but devoid of human elements.
However, director Zhang manages to exert his artistic instincts in the after-battle sequence when imperial janitors clean up the bloody mess of millions of corpses as if they were merely rolling up a stained carpet.
An entry for this year's Oscars, Curse of Golden Flower is enchanting because of its theatrical indulgence, a peculiar accomplishment to some, but a failure on the part of the seemingly lost Chinese director for others.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist