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| Hungry
for revenge: Li in Curse of the Golden Flower. |
Bloody
Intrigue
By Ann Morrow
Curse of the Golden Flower
Directed by Zhang Yimou
In Zhang Yimou’s new period drama, Curse of the Golden Flower,
almost everyone ends up either as devious as a Medici or as
insane as Ivan the Terrible, yet even its outsized emotions
are bowed by the film’s meticulous visual extravagance. Set
in the Forbidden City during the Tang dynasty, it centers
on the imperial family, whose tragic disintegration was set
in motion a generation previous. Like all of Yimou’s films
(Raise the Red Lantern, Shanghai Triad), there’s
a political agenda lurking beneath the lush art direction
and exquisite acting.
The first murderous rift occurs between the Emperor (Chow
Yun-Fat) and his consort (Gong Li), who suffers from bouts
of a strange fever. She is attended by the crown prince, Wan
(Liu Ye), who is not her son—Wan’s birth mother died while
the Emperor was busy usurping the throne. The Empress loves
Wan not as a mother, but as a lover. When the daughter of
the palace physician replaces her in his affections, the Empress
schemes to position her own son, Prince Jai (Jay Chou), as
heir to the empire. Eventually, tens of thousands will die
as a result of jealous whims within the family. Yimou’s masterly
contrast of decadent palace intrigues with the era’s cultural
opulence and philosophical refinement prevents the hothouse
plot (even the brilliantly colored corridors of the imperial
chambers seem to glow with a sickly phosphorescence) from
bubbling into soap opera.
The ritualized civilities of legions of royal servants are
just a warm-up for the battle sequences, which start out with
secret raids by trapeze-like ninjas and escalate into monumental
clashes between seemingly millions of soldiers. Though Curse
of the Golden Flower (named for the yellow chrysanthemums
that carpet the city for a festival) lightly employs some
of the magical wire work and acrobatic choreography familiar
from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it also holds
its own with The Two Towers for massive yet intimate
battle sequences and dramatic settings. And just when it seemed
that there was nothing new to be done with sword-era fighting,
Yimou creates a new marital-arts genre with the ninjas’ rope-thrown
scythes, which are astoundingly countered by the army’s pikes.
The gorgeous production and costuming—there’s an element of
pride in the filmmaker’s reproduction of the dynasty’s vast
magnificence—is matched by the casting: Only stars of the
magnitude of Li (beautifully tragic) and Yun-Fat (charismatically
autocratic) could avoid being upstaged by the clothes on their
backs (the winglike sleeves alone could swamp lesser luminaries).
Though the wretched excesses of the imperial family lack the
emotional involvement of smaller-scaled intrigues such as
Crouching Tiger, the malevolence of absolute power
seeps through even the most lyrical of the film’s images.
Pale
and Precious
The
Painted Veil
Directed
by John Curran
The latest film version of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel, The
Painted Veil, hits viewers with the full brunt of the beauty
that is inland China, which is good, since the scenery is
the only thing approaching the dramatic in what is essentially
a polite undertaking. An earlier version, done in 1934, didn’t
have color, and didn’t feel the need to draw on the plot’s
location. It had Garbo.
I’m not being facetious. Not only was Greta Garbo, as a mere
presence, astounding and captivating, but her performance,
which I was privileged to see many years ago on television,
conveyed the kind of gravity and desperation that drove and
ultimately developed her character Kitty, from a spoiled narcissist
to a woman transformed by grief and love. Now, with director
John Curran’s and screenwriter Ron Nyswaner’s version, we
have a Kitty, played by Naomi Watts, who isn’t so much morally
repelled as she is slightly bored by a singular lack of purpose
in life. She appears to us first as a, well, bored party girl
who ends up marrying besotted bacteriologist (!) Walter Fane
(Edward Norton) as a sort of counterattack to her mother’s
incessant bickering. Once the newlyweds are settled in China,
where Walter does research, he does everything he can to woo
his bride, but she prefers the lust and virility of dashing
bureaucrat Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber).
When the cuckolded Walter confronts her and presents her with
the option of going with him into the midst of a cholera epidemic
in a remote Chinese village, or presenting her with divorce
papers, she retorts that Charlie loves her, and that they
both want to put an end to this charade. One can’t help but
feel pity for her poor addled brain, as it is clear that she’s
fallen for the usual lines offered by a married lover. Unfortunately,
despite the fact that this is the one scene in the entire
movie that crackles with something approaching fire, Watts,
Nyswaner and Curran fail to use it to elevate Kitty beyond
a mere peevishly selfish, spoiled child.
As the story takes us into the Chinese interior, secondary
plotlines like potential civil unrest and, of course, the
cholera epidemic itself, gently nudge into view, but Curran
seems too interested in long scenes of silent dinners between
the warring couple to inject the movie with something approaching
suspense. After all, these people’s lives are at stake, with
either of them having an excellent chance of being killed
by disease or one or another member of disgruntled political
factions. Strangely, such factors don’t seem to matter much—indeed,
a scene in which the nuns and orphans of a convent barricade
themselves for fear of imminent attack comes off as strangely
devoid of terror.
Whereas Garbo enhanced the earlier film, but had good support
from the likes of Herbert Marshall and George Brent, this
version is helped by Norton’s strong performance, particularly
in the aforementioned scene in which he confronts the cheating
Kitty. But both he and Watts suffer, as the movie progresses,
from the script’s lack of focus on the drive that would impel
a wronged man to inflict such dangerous odds upon both himself
and his wife, or what forces might compel that woman to stay,
even when shown an out. The addition of Diana Rigg as a mother
superior spouting advice about the coupling of passion and
duty, followed by a coda in which bereavement comes off as
the height of style, do nothing to wriggle The Painted
Veil out of its cozy corner of fastidious plotting and
retro fashion.
—Laura
Leon
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