|
BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
|
 Posted - 04/18/2007 : 10:20:29
|
Curse of the Golden Flower:
For the latest of his lush, near-mythic tales of ancient China made over some several decades, Yimou Zhang has chosen a moral fable set in the claustrophobic gated imperial Tan dynasty court high in the mountains. The Chinese title literally means When Golden Armor Covers the Entire City, but the metaphoric 'golden flower' or chrysanthemum, which, unlike its Japanese counterpart symbolizing honesty, is traditionally symbolic of maternal love and family devotion.
This lends a tragic irony to the tale of a dysfunctional royal family whose paternal head rules by fierce dictat - and Chow Yung Fat meets the imperious demands of the role with subtlety, confidence, and a contained grandeur which nearly always keeps his baser brutality in check - but which is terrifying when he lets it loose.
The irony hubs around the Emperor's troubled relationship with his 2nd wife, personified by the stunning Gong Li who just gets better and better. She can imply more of the inner angst and reined in intellect of a bird in a gilded cage than just about anyone in any language in any screen era. Her vulnerability as a mother, a step-mother, and the increasingly spurned wife of a megalomaniacal king doesn't prevent the actress from conveying the courageous way she submits to duty, even when it threatens her life. Nor does it get in the way of devising tactics for revenge. She's no wimp, and never lets us forget the woman beneath the royal head-dress.
Yimou controls the pace of this twisted tale from the first, entrapping us in daily palace ritual as tradition has trapped the thousands of courtiers whose lives are devoted to one thing only: to keep the ritual going, to keep the dynasty flowing.
If you surrender to to the world of the film you will gradually be drawn in, you will begin to feel the drops of tension dripped into the story like dew collecting on a leaf which rolls down to join other droplets, eventually carving out a path, then a torrent, and finally an explosion that hits the screen with the force of a waterfall tumbling into rapids. And, if you imagine the water devoured by blood, you'll have an inkling of how the film progresses.
Yimou may take liberties with historical accuracy - the Tan dynasty roughly coincided with our 10th century. He may have based his tale on a story of the 1930s. But his cinema technique and vision combine to create a wholly believable world with resonance to a contemporary political map. Photography literally means 'painting with light,' and Yimou confirms if confirmation were needed he's a light-and-shadow artist.
The claustrophobia of the court is underscored by one of the most carefully thought-out production designs I've ever seen, and Yimou shoots it to emphasize a telling phenomenon. Internal corridors are created by a succession of floor-to-ceiling columnular colored lanterns and sliding screens which hide sumptuous chambers. Yimou often places us in the corridors rather than the rooms where people await other people. Always their presence is announced by disembodied voices. So the visuals emphasize isolation, yet the voices indicate that nothing goes unnoticed, nothing goes unremarked. For a tale that depends on who knows what, on secrets kept and secrets revealed which result in horrific tragedy ... that directorial choice is perfect.
Also, Yimou follows masterfully in the footsteps of such supreme cineasts as Eisenstein and Kurosawa who know how to counterpoint widescreen vistas with emotional close-ups, extrapolating the human to a wider canvas. What Yimou brings in addition is a painter's eye to the patterning of landscapes and wide-shots. Look out especially to one near the end, where golden flowers and people might be interchangeable. Marvel, too, at the contrast between the queen's golden-clad troops and the king's almost beetle-like army.
In story terms, I don't believe it's giving anything away to report that in addition to fulfilling all the demands of sword fighting and ninja attacks and armies that clash to the bitter end - the film's message couldn't be stronger in terms of the necessary courage, pain, determination and submission of self to overcome tyranny, no matter how familiar and orderly it may appear.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Though it, too, concerns powerful secrets and fatal consequences, Perfect Stranger couldn't be more different. It needn't have been as bad as it is, but director James Foley - who's produced such notable efforts as the brilliantly atmospheric After Dark, My Sweet and the superior scripted Glengarry Glen Ross - just hasn't been able to distinguish this from a host of other less-than-thrilling thrillers.
If you choose to hop aboard you're in for a ride shared with serviceable actors, particularly Halle Berry and Giovanni Ribisi as investigative reporters spilling beans of corporate and political corruption among the rich and powerful of New York. Sadly they're teamed with Bruce Willis, who's now wholly committed to the Smirk school of acting.
Trying to carve a sensible path through this pretzel of a plot takes all your suspension of disbelief. And I betcha you'll still fail to get it all. Now in itself, that's not the sign of a bad film ... even the filmmakers of the wonderful 1946 Big Sleep confessed they didn't always know exactly what was going on. But with this you simply don't care.
I'd keep it a stranger if I were you. Rainy day, maybe you've got flu and just wanna see shadows flit across your telly-screen ... okay, bung in the DVD. But money at the box-office? Save that for a perfect friend.
|
|
|
randall
"I like to watch."
|
Posted - 04/19/2007 : 23:58:10
|
| Yimou was in NYC for the FSLC pre-release screening of GOLDEN FLOWER on my birthday last year. [The ticket was my wife's bday present to me.] He waved to us from the stage, then we watched the movie, and though I thought it a slight step back from his two previous, it was still thrilling to be in the same room with him! |
 |
|
Latest Double-Bill: analysis not plot spoilers
