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Moriarty’s Review Of Chow Yun-Fat And Gong Li In Zhang Yimou’s CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER!
Now that I’ve finally reviewed the rest of the films I saw at the AFI Fest, I want to reflect on one film in particular, the closing-night gala screening, the world premiere of Zhang Yimou’s CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER.
Hats off to the festival programmers. If you’re going to close a fest, this is how you do it. Zhang Yimou was actually at the screening at the Cinerama Dome, along with his two stars, Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li, and they came to the afterparty on the roof of the Arclight afterwards. I’ve met a lot of movie stars over the years, but there’s a whole different charge to seeing Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li in person for me. There’s something about the way they carry themselves that reminds me of Old Hollywood, when we used to build our movie stars bigger than life.
The film itself is a sumptuous beautiful epic on the surface, but at heart, it’s an intimate story about a family gone sour, rotting from the inside due to ambition and mistrust. It’s Zhang Yimou successfully marrying the sensibilities of his early films like RAISE THE RED LANTERN or RED SORGHUM or QUI JU to his recent epic interests in films like HERO and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS. There’s a strong vibe here of Shakespeare via Kurosawa, a la THRONE OF BLOOD or RED BEARD, and everything’s played at a sort of heightened theatrical pitch that I found engrossing.
So why have reviewers in publications like VARIETY and THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER rejected the film so completely in their reviews? Why is it running a 43% on Rotten Tomatoes right now? Beats me, but it’s like we saw completely different films. I was drawn into this world from the very first frame, and I think it’s the most rewarding of Yimou’s recent films. The soul of this royal family is split right down the middle between Emperor Ping (Chow Yun-Fat) and Empress Phoenix (Gong Li), and these two performers bring the full weight of their respective careers to bear on these roles. Although the characterizations aren’t simple, it’s safe to call Chow Yun-Fat the villain of the piece, an uncommon occurrence in his career. He’s not some moustache-twirling cartoon, though. He’s determined to exert his will, no matter what, for the sheer sake of exerting it, and that drives him to the most terrible and arbitrary lengths in his dealings with his Empress.
Gong Li has aged beautifully over the years in front of the camera, and she taps into a deep sadness for her work in this film. From the very beginning, she’s crushed under the thumb of her husband, forced to take regular doses of a medicine that he personally formulates for her. She’s been taking it for years, and her “condition,” which remains unnamed for the full running time, seems to stay the same no matter what, never improving but also never getting worse. For this Empress, royal life is a prison, and the palace is a claustrophobic hallucination. This really doesn’t look like either of the director’s recent martial arts epics. It’s far more stark. There’s an ugly undercurrent running from the very start of the film, always threatening to shift from subtext to text. Something’s changed. Suddenly, Gong Li is dying. She can feel the change, knows that her husband has finally decided to kill her. She sees no choice but to put things in order, finally dragging everything, every awful secret, out into the light of day for the entire family to see.
That’s the ticking clock of this battle of wills, a husband and a wife bound by secrets and sorrow as much as by anything resembling love, head to head with each other as the pain finally becomes too much to bear. There are other people involved, of course. The Emperor and Empress have three sons, and all three of them have complicated relationships of their own with their parents. One has been away, banished for a time. One is the baby of the family, coddled and spoiled. One is the eldest, facing up to the fact that he is not worthy to be his father’s heir. There’s a savage beauty to the way this family tears itself apart, and Zhang Yimou’s adaptation of Cao Yu’s play is pointed, prickly, difficult by intent right down to its devastating final image. So often, costume epics are cinematic sleeping pills by design. They’re meant to be like a ride through a wax museum, and the last thing they do is provoke or challenge. Not true here. Zhang Yimou delivers on the big action beats that make this a true epic, and he got my pulse pounding every time.
But what haunts me about this movie, even a month after I saw it, is Gong Li, finally reunited with the filmmaker who made her a star in the first place, tearing into this role with a regal presence that masks a warrior’s spirit. Her work elevates a juicy melodrama into something akin to art, and it's her work that will bring me back to this film as soon as I can see it again.
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
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Damn you Michael Bay
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Been waiting for this one.
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I thought she was about 28.
Thats it, I'm moving to china. -
Sounds as detailed as the Emperor and the assassin. Excellent movie which Jet Li's Hero is kind of a remake of.
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Gong Li is so beautiful in this (And evreything else) else. It's a shame this woman has never been recognized on the American Oscars, She is one of the best in the world.
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Big American Media can't relate to Asian cinema, hence the negative reviews, methinks.
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"Big American Media can't relate to Asian cinema, hence the negative reviews, methinks".
You hit the nail on the head. -
Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh, Ming Na and Maggie Cheung are all in their early 40's, yet don't look a day over 30. 20 years from now, Ziyi Zhang will probably look exactly the same as she does now. Fucking crazy.
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Whatever the film it seems Zhang Yimou always brings amazing visuals. Although I found the story in Hero to be underwhelming I couldn't help but admire its style. The trailer for Curse pretty much sold me on this so I think I'll end up seeing it despite the negative reviews and I'll make my own mind up. Nice to see a thumbs up here though.
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His films are so devoid of pretense and window dressing - everything is absolutely heartfelt and delivered with such a beauty and nobility that is just about extinct in films today. I'm not surprised with some of the bad reviews, in that his work has been so consistently powerful that a backlash from the soulless mofos was inevitable, as it always is. I can't wait to see this.
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and blows the place to smithreens!
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Did Drew drop is handel?
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I actually think normal Asian women age the worst, but that is because they often look good when they are young. Many other women don't even have that going for them.
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Saw it a few weeks ago and it knocked me out. One of the few great films this year. Can't wait to see it again.
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... finally spurred you into posting YOUR review did I? Mine was better. Nevermind.
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...moron. Who writes this shit. BUT ITS OK.... THEY ARE ONLY CHINESE, RIGHT? This site is run by wankers anyway.
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"Michelle Yeoh, Ming Na and Maggie Cheung"
All three look over 40 to me. Gong Li looks about late 20's and primo
gorgeous to boot. -
Regardless of age. Oh, and Rosie O'Donnell should be fired for being an ignorant dumbass when insulting Asians.
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between 50-55, they usually age about 20 years in appearance. the racism is killin me on the inside.
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Great one Moriarty. I felt the same exact way. I have no idea why it's getting such negative reviews. I thought in some ways it was the strongest of the three (in some ways that is)
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Yes, it's true. I put FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE in the list above, a goof. But if you think it's because I'm racist, you can go fuck yourself, Seph_J. Not sure what's up your ass or why we are all "wankers," but I appreciate your feedback. Now eat me.
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Oh, and thanks for the review - I am gonna check this out. Two of my fave Chinese actors at once! Yeah!
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This sounds interesting. I look forward to seeing it.
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when i saw the trailer it completely owned me and i am a fan of Hero. i'm a huge fan of it actually, but House of Flying Daggers was all style and very little substance and ended up being quite trite in my book. i'm hoping for the level of Hero here. the film is a serious work of art. the man shoots such amazingly sumptuous pictures. if nothing else i'll see it opening day and know that at least my eyes were allowed to bask in some glory that doesnt come around all that often.
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never
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Seriously. That's all I know about this movie. Is it enough? Maybe, grasshopper, maybe yes, not maybe no.
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"Then Colin Farrell rides in on a speed boat..."
And Gong Li has him Executed.
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so you're telling me mine only has like 25 more years left in her? damn...cant wait for this film btw...Yimuo has been on a roll recently...ten again, has he ever had a down point? House of Flying Daggers was INCREDIBLE on the IMAX screen.
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Despite being lumped together, there was a big difference between Hero and Flying Daggers (and Crouching Tiger for that matter). Hero stays in the tradition of Kurosawa of film as art puzzle, specifically the puzzle of translating three dimensional space onto a two-dimensional medium, which sorts of tricks to invoke that sense of space (raindrops, leaves, papyrus, arrows), and where to deploy the viewer's eye in perspective to the subject that inhabits the space. The fights focused on the space in which they fought. And what worked wonders was how the psychology of the drama mingled with the psychology of the viewer in that presence of space, we were more affected emotionally by that then the nuts and bolts of the narrative. I think Yimou first took on the wuxia genre only as an excuse to experiment in the cinematic philosophy of Kurosawa. But Flying Daggers, for all its beauty and colors and effects, possessed little to none of that, except *maybe* the blind drumming game. It was for the most part just a double-crossing bizarre love triangle set in pretty environments. The spatial environments where action occured doesn't affect us the same as in Hero. What I am curious about is where does Curse fall in relation to these two films? Does it consciously invoke our sense of space in which the action takes place? Or does it play it more safe as in Flying Daggers, wanting us to focus on the more conventional theatrical drama with some cinematic (but not Kurosawan) sense of space?
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