Curse of the Golden Flower

I went to see Curse of the Golden Flower last night.

I'm a huge fan of the director Zhang Yimou, Ying Xiong (Hero with Jet Li) is one of my all time favourite movies. Zhang has an amazing eye for imagery and a modern artistic sense that allows him to marry Asian iconography and symbolism with Western theatricality. When I was in Munich, Germany a couple years ago I nearly had a chance to catch Zhang's production of Puccini's "Chinese" opera Turandot, the same production he had staged in Beijing at the Forbidden City, I really regret not trying harder to catch it now. Golden Flower is a gorgeous film with one of the richest visual palettes I've ever seen in cinema.

The set design, costume design and cinematography are all decadent to the extreme. The film's leads, Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li as Emperor and Empress and heads of a highly dysfunctional royal family, give performances that are subtle yet intense. The film's pacing is a little un-even, the first half is very dialogue-heavy, Zhang uses it to really build the intrigue in the story and it's all an elaborate build-up to the action-packed (and often gory) second half of the movie.

As the story unfolded I was reminded very much of some of Shakespeare's works. There are obvious parallels to Hamlet; themes of royal corruption, incest, plots to usurp the throne, but as the second act unfolded I was reminded more of Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's gruesome revenge-tragedy and his bloodiest and most-violent play.

**Spoiler Warning**

While Zhang was obviously influenced by Western sources the film is very Chinese in its themes. The story follows a revenge plot by Gong Li's Empress character as she plots to usurp the throne from The Emperor not necessarily because she is power-hungry but more as a means of self-preservation as the Emperor is slowly poisoning the Empress by forcing her to take a special "medicine" to cure her supposed anemia. At the end of the movie, the Empress' bloody coup has failed, all three of her sons are dead and she is still forced to drink the medicine that will eventually kill her, she is completely broken and defeated.

I couldn't help but think that if this were a Western movie, the Empress' coup would have succeeded, there would be this great "girl power" message and she'd go on to live happily ever-after (roll credits with an Evanescence song in the background). Hollywood movies are so formulaic and predictable nowadays that when you see a tragedy where there isn't a happy ending it feels odd, though because it was so different the ending to this film actually felt like a breath of fresh air.

The ending also begs the question posed by the vast cultural differences between China and the West. In the West the triumph of the individual is of the utmost importance, in most Asian cultures the success of the group is more important than the success of any one individual. This may be why most Western movies are some variation of the Hero (or Heroine) fighting and triumphing over "the Man". In this frame of reference the message of Golden Flower seems to be, "no matter how hard you try to fight to overcome your circumstances tyranny will always triumph". Or maybe the ultimate message of the film is "below the beautiful exterior of Power there is corruption to the core". But then again, maybe this film isn't trying to be as didactic as its Western counterparts, maybe this is just a drama/action/tragedy with no pretenses of a greater message.

Overall I really enjoyed the film, there are some phenomenal action sequences, although they are less balletic and slightly more gory than in Hero or House of Flying Daggers. The sumptuous visual feast that this film provides is reason enough to see it.