Her father dead and her family bankrupt, 19-year-old Songlian (Gong Li) relents to her stepmother's calls for marriage. She drops out of school and becomes the concubine of Master Chen (Jingwu Ma) a wealthy merchant, who welcomes her into his household, lavishing her with treatment more luxurious than any she has known. Yet luxury, as always, comes with a price, and the three other mistresses in the master's house (Caifei He, Cuifen Cao, and Jin Shuyuan) are less than enthusiastic about the sudden presence of an attractive young rival. To make matters worse, Chen decides, on a daily basis, which of his four concubines will receive his nocturnal patronage. The woman he settles on receives all the services the house has to offer, and the women who come up short are summarily forgotten. Consequently, the women must jockey for position, all vying for the privilege of the titular lanterns, lit outside the house of whatever woman is lucky enough to receive the master's company.
Raise the Red Lantern a genuine masterpiece bears the fruit of the planet's last three-strip Technicolor lab, located in Shanghai, and you can't so much as glance at the screen without noticing the difference. Lanterns dangle from the eves of the buildings and burn with lavish brilliance. The brightly clad protagonists leap from the backdrop of drab-colored stones. The lights of the houses glisten in the intermittent blizzards of oncoming winter. Every single frame in the entire movie is enough to make the mouth water, yet for all its deliciousness, it's never the beauty of what we're looking at that holds our attention so much as the ambiguity of that which remains off-screen. We never see the entrance to Master Chen's massive, sprawling compound, nor do we get a clear idea of its size, its layout, or its exact population. It appears to have no limits, expanding outward to infinity, encompassing all of China. Becoming China. Master Chen, for his part, is something of an enigma. At no point in the film do we get a clear look at his face. He's more concept than creature, inseparable from the oppressive rules of his house, from the dictums of tradition, from Chinese society at large.
For China, the 1920s was a time of collision, between ancient traditions and the rumbling of modernity, between entrenched patriarchy and the almost teasing suggestion that women might begin taking stock in their fortunes. The protagonists of Lantern, and Songlian in particular, bear the brunt of this clash. Caught between the promise of freedom and the reality of servitude, they can only find power in the privileges of the house, and yet the more they exploit these privileges, the more the privileges control them.
Yimou goes to great lengths to remind us of this fact, jerking us back and forth between long shots and close-ups, from beginning to end. Long shots create an almost Kubrickean sense of emptiness, dwelling on vast, impersonal spaces in which characters seem to vanish against their will. Close-ups zero in on all the incidental details that make up the daily routine the foot massages and the preparation of the afternoon meals all facets of the unassailable dead weight of tradition. Editing the film in this way makes us feel like there's no relief from the prison, regardless of our perspective, regardless of where we're at in relation to the subject at hand. Even the sound effects begin to feel like wardens. The clack of the foot massage, the eerie rush of the lanterns getting blown out in the morning, the periodic voice of the compound crier, announcing where the lanterns are to be lit, and who will receive the privileges that go with it . . . all of it creates an incessant sense of continuum. An unbroken cycle. A pursuer that never gets tired.
I could go on and on with my praise, but doing so would be insult to the strength of Yimou's storytelling. Watch it, love it, and ask yourself why the devil they don't make movies like this all the time.
Raise the Red Lantern a genuine masterpiece bears the fruit of the planet's last three-strip Technicolor lab, located in Shanghai, and you can't so much as glance at the screen without noticing the difference. Lanterns dangle from the eves of the buildings and burn with lavish brilliance. The brightly clad protagonists leap from the backdrop of drab-colored stones. The lights of the houses glisten in the intermittent blizzards of oncoming winter. Every single frame in the entire movie is enough to make the mouth water, yet for all its deliciousness, it's never the beauty of what we're looking at that holds our attention so much as the ambiguity of that which remains off-screen. We never see the entrance to Master Chen's massive, sprawling compound, nor do we get a clear idea of its size, its layout, or its exact population. It appears to have no limits, expanding outward to infinity, encompassing all of China. Becoming China. Master Chen, for his part, is something of an enigma. At no point in the film do we get a clear look at his face. He's more concept than creature, inseparable from the oppressive rules of his house, from the dictums of tradition, from Chinese society at large.
For China, the 1920s was a time of collision, between ancient traditions and the rumbling of modernity, between entrenched patriarchy and the almost teasing suggestion that women might begin taking stock in their fortunes. The protagonists of Lantern, and Songlian in particular, bear the brunt of this clash. Caught between the promise of freedom and the reality of servitude, they can only find power in the privileges of the house, and yet the more they exploit these privileges, the more the privileges control them.
Yimou goes to great lengths to remind us of this fact, jerking us back and forth between long shots and close-ups, from beginning to end. Long shots create an almost Kubrickean sense of emptiness, dwelling on vast, impersonal spaces in which characters seem to vanish against their will. Close-ups zero in on all the incidental details that make up the daily routine the foot massages and the preparation of the afternoon meals all facets of the unassailable dead weight of tradition. Editing the film in this way makes us feel like there's no relief from the prison, regardless of our perspective, regardless of where we're at in relation to the subject at hand. Even the sound effects begin to feel like wardens. The clack of the foot massage, the eerie rush of the lanterns getting blown out in the morning, the periodic voice of the compound crier, announcing where the lanterns are to be lit, and who will receive the privileges that go with it . . . all of it creates an incessant sense of continuum. An unbroken cycle. A pursuer that never gets tired.
I could go on and on with my praise, but doing so would be insult to the strength of Yimou's storytelling. Watch it, love it, and ask yourself why the devil they don't make movies like this all the time.