Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
Directed by Zhang Yimou
In 1920s China, 19-year-old Songlian becomes a concubine of a powerful lord and is forced to compete with his three wives for the privileges gained.
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What critics compared Raise the Red Lantern to
How the same talented director (Zhang Yimou of "The Road Home" and "Raise the Red Lantern"), working with the same talented actress (lovely Zhang Ziyi of "The Road Home" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" ) could turn out one of the year's best movies and one its worst -- in the same genre no less -- is a complete mystery.
Iâm embarrassed to admit Iâve only recently come to appreciate the gorgeous operatics of Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou â Hero was the first of his films Iâd ever seen â but Iâve been cramming him and his 20-year oeuvre (Ju-Dou, Raise the Red Lantern) ever since.
The director is Zhang Yimou, who last tried for a big action hit with this summer's "Hero," an opulent production starring Jet Li that some, myself included, saw as an apologia for Mao, surprising coming from Zhang, who'd stood for opposition to the regime in many of his earlier, brilliant pictures, such as "Red Sorghum" and "Raise the Red Lantern."
Among our favorites are the historical dramas, Raise the Red Lantern and Ju Dou, and the touching tales of peasants Not One Less and The Road Home.
The same rule comes into play with House Of Flying Daggers, a follow-up that takes baby steps toward merging the emotional force of early Zhang classics like Raise The Red Lantern with his current style of choice.
Shackled with these jaded preconceptions and a mountain of advance hype (aided by a maddeningly peekaboo release schedule), the critical and popular success of director Yimou Zhang's Hero came as a welcome shock; an unexpectedly deep Goliath which married the emotional precision of his earlier films (such as Raise the Red Lantern and Ju Dou) with a newfound gargantuan energy and scope--the glee of a small-scale model expert who suddenly discovers a giant robot revving up in his backyard.
Seriously, if you’d wagered me that you could throw a big budget, director Zhang Yimou (“Raise the Red Lantern,” “Hero,””House of Flying Daggers”), screenwriter Tony “Michael Clayton” Gilroy and Matt Damon and Willem Dafoe at a movie and have it come out this silly, I’d have taken that bet.
After all, doesn't he deserve that bit of leniency from us as he has more than proven his talents with such brilliant films as Raise the Red Lantern (1991) and House of Flying Daggers (2004)?
Its director is Zhang Yimou, who once upon a time was one of China’s greatest filmmakers, responsible for lauded historical dramas like Raise the Red Lantern as well as neo-wuxia action sagas like Hero.
That’s largely what you’d expect from director Zhang Yimou ( Hero , Raise the Red Lantern ), who is more visual artist than storyteller.
Zhang Yimou, the versatile director of splashy martial-arts epics like Hero and House of Flying Daggers , but also human dramas like Raise the Red Lantern and Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, is probably incapable of making a movie that isn’t worth looking at.
Director Zhang Yimou has made some of the most ravishingly beautiful films to come out of China, including “Raise the Red Lantern,” “House of Flying Daggers,” and “Hero,” movies that are lavishly sensual in their use of color and light.
To appreciate the irony of such a situation, skip this movie and watch Zhang Yimou�s Raise the Red Lantern.
Playing a heavy in a film like this is either a curse or a blessing - depending on whether the character is to be rendered straight or larger than life - and Gong, who has earned legendary status as an early muse of director Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern), enjoys her own first taste of success in a project that exploits the exoticism of Oriental culture to highly dramatic if not always believable effect.
The actress first gained the international spotlight for her work in the superb Raise the Red Lantern, in which she played an innocent preyed upon by older, more cunning women.
So we have Ziyi Zhang, whose career was kick-started by her martial artistry in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, together with the Malaysian-born Michelle Yeoh, her Crouching Tiger co-star, and, to complete the trio, Gong Li (Raise the Red Lantern).