Curse of the Golden Flower

A

Those who came to Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower expecting a reprisal of his stabs at the martial arts genre might be disappointed (he directed Hero and House of Flying Daggers). Though set in ancient China where everyone - and I do mean everyone - seems to have the capability at least to defend oneself from a handful of attackers, there aren't many swordfights or mid-air acrobatic somersaults. Curse of the Golden Flower is a different kind of story. It's a tragedy in the time of the Tang Dynasty with the potency comparable to Shakespeare, filled with conflicted characters, twisted motivations, and (most satisfyingly) lots of heaving bosoms.

The plot resembles (and might have been derived from) The Lion In Winter. For the coming of the Chrysantemum Festival, the royal family of the Tang Dynasty is reunited. The Emperor (Chow Yun Fat) deliberates the passing of his throne to one of his sons. His first born, Wan (Liu Ye), the one who he loves the most, is his natural successor; but Wan does not desire to be king. Instead, the gentle prince wants to retire to a small province and marry the daughter of the imperial doctor, Chan (Li Man). So, overlooking his youngest son, Prince Yu (Qin Junjie), the kingdom is to be passed to the second-born, the able warrior, Prince Jai (Jay Chow). The decision was to be announced after the festival. Prince Jai is filial to his mother, The Empress (Gong Li), and worries at her illness. Unbeknownst to him, The Empress used to be Wan's lover, and is being poisoned by The Emperor for her infidelity. Over a period of two days before the festival, these characters would learn that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

The first thing one would notice from Curse of the Golden Flower is the impeccable attention to details to bring the before-unseen world of imperial China to life. Behind the walls and through the gates of the Forbidden City lies a self-sustaining city, populated with concubines and eunuchs, armies and spies, servants and masters. All the walls are either gold or jade, all the dresses silky and grand, and at the end of some period, time-keepers chime the passing of the "hours". The way all this was brought to life surpasses anything else in Curse of the Golden Flower, and this is what sets the movie apart, I can savely say, from any other movie out there ever.

The plot, as I said, might have been derived from The Lion In Winter. There is a scene where on the morning before the festival, the royal family was together at last. And from the way it was staged, one had the feeling that what precedes would be a game of wits between The Emperor and The Empress, playing on the loyalties of their sons. However, unlike The Lion In Winter, this one does not have such a clever script. Things come to boil slowly, too slowly perhaps, that one does become restless at the glacial pace during the movie's first hour (how many times must GongLi be subjected to perspiration-laden seizures for us to cry, "We get it. She's being poisoned."). But thing do come to a head in the second hour, and so forcefully do the pillars come tumbling down that we are taken unaware. The last half-hour is a hallmark of intense plot-development that woudl leave viewers shell-shocked.

So Curse of the Golden Flower is not the same movie as the last few films that revolve around the same setting (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and the afore mentioned Hero and House of Flying Daggers). While there are some impressive fighting set-pieces, they are not action-packed. Instead all the fighting sequences in this movie are but a way to enliven the proceeding as the plot come to its slow simmer. So as Hero shows Zhang Yimou delving into the notion of truths with a unique cinematic take, and his House of Flying Dagger is like a straight telling of a folk-tale about warriors and thieves, this time around, he's taken up the collosal tragedy that could consume an empire. It does not take much to think of how gifted a filmmaker he must be such that he could make such different movies, with their own special flourishes, so well.
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