RAISE THE RED LANTERN
A film review by George V. Reilly
Copyright 1992 George V. Reilly
RAISE THE RED LANTERN is a film directed by Zhang Yimou. It stars Gong Li and was nominated for this year's Best Foreign Film Oscar.
Zhang Yimou is probably best known in the West for his previous film, JU DOU, which also starred Gong Li as a young woman married to a rich older man. There the similarities end.
In this film set in 1920's China, Gong Li plays Songlian, a young woman who has been forced to leave the university after the death of her father and who must find a husband. She becomes the Fourth Mistress of Master Chen. The household is divided into several wings and each of the Mistresses holds court in her own wing. Each night, the Master has the concubines stand in a common courtyard where he chooses the one with whom he will sleep that night by placing a red lantern in front of her. As red lanterns are raised all around her house so that mistress goes into the ascendant.
The Mistresses are engaged in a never-ending power struggle. First Mistress, who has a grown son, is not an active participant: she is accorded the respect due to her seniority. The Second Mistress, who has only a 'worthless' daughter, is sweet and charming. The Third Mistress, with a son the same age as his half-sister, is catty and jealous of Songlian. Meishan is an ex-opera singer and the Master's former favourite, and doesn't take kindly to the usurper. She pretends to be ill on Songlian's wedding night, so that the Master will come to her bed.
Gradually, though, Songlian comes to realize that her real enemy is the Second Mistress who "has the face of a Buddha, but the heart of a scorpion." By now determined to win power over her "sisters", Songlian pretends to be pregnant. Eventually, she is found out---betrayed by her maid upon whom she wreaks vengeance. The stakes are raised ever higher and tragedy ensues.
RED LANTERN has been banned in China as being ideologically incorrect, presumably because it can be viewed as an allegory about China. The household is bound by a unyielding set of rules and strictures, disobeyed only by the foolhardy. One of the Mistresses is discovered in adultery and taken away; another happens upon a group of the servants taking the adulteress to her death. When she discovers the body, she screams "Murderers!", but the Master blandly denies the accusation, tells her that she is mad and that she saw nothing, just as the Beijing government denies Tiannamen Square.
Like JU DOU, RED LANTERN is beautiful. In particular, Zhang Yimou makes very effective use of sunlight. The pace of the film is slow and assured, like a formal dance, each step proceeding inexorably from what has gone before.
Gong Li is excellent as the Fourth Mistress, as are the actresses who play Second and Third Mistresses.
I recommend RAISE THE RED LANTERN highly.
________________ George V. Reilly GeorgR@microsoft.com (formerly gvr@cs.brown.edu)
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