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 the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
Toward the outside edge of Taichung City, in Wufeng District (霧峰去), sits a sprawling collection of single-story buildings with tiled roofs belonging to the Wufeng Lin (霧峰林家) family, who rose to prominence through success in military, commercial, and artistic endeavors in the 19th century. Most of these buildings have brick walls and tiled roofs in the traditional reddish-brown color, but in the middle is one incongruous property with bright white walls and a black tiled roof: Yipu Garden (頤圃). Purists may scoff at the Japanese-style exterior and its radical departure from the Fujianese architectural style of the surrounding buildings. However, the property
RSS