"Raise the Red Lantern"

Two subtitled films in one week? Klassy! Or maybe just an attempt to save those dying neurons? Actually, I would watch more foreign movies, but--much like my problems with fiction read in translation--I always mistrust the subtitles a bit, and wonder what I'm missing by not being able to understand all the dialogue.

In RtRL, this really isn't so much of an issue, because it can be appreciated just on a visual level alone. Gorgeous cinematography, and a gorgeous young Gong Li, who doesn't even have that much dialogue anyway. So much of her acting is done just with the subtle expressions that flit across her face, with the set of her body. And some of the visual choices add understanding that transcends language--the fact that "the master" is never clearly shown, but instead is always shot from behind, or in a long shot, or behind the bed curtains, such that after a two hour movie the viewer still has no clear idea what he looks like, is brilliant. And, to me, emphasizes that all he is to these women is The Husband, that they are all jockeying for his favor, not because of who he is as an individual, but because getting his attention is the only way to move up in the hierarchy. He might just as well as be faceless.

Now, generally, I don't read the netflix viewer reviews until after I've watched the film myself, and then I see how much I disagree with everyone else's interpretations. Many of the reviews of RtRL frame it as a tragedy of what happens to women in a brutal patriarchal system. And, yeah, the master gets to choose which woman he's going to sleep with each night, gets to repudiate the one he feels has lied to him, and have killed the one who cheats. Yes, he's got that ultimate power. But what so many people seem to miss as their feminist Western principles are being outraged by that, is how in everyday life he is so controlled by these women and their whims and little schemes. Add that to the fact that he has to know that they've married him for his money and that (as noted above) they want his attentions just for the temporary status they bring and the possibility of permanent status if they lead to impregnation with a son. I see the film as saying that the whole system was broken and sad. (Is modern Western marriage for love any less broken and sad? 'Cause we all know how that so often works out, eh? But that's a post for another day.)

The other point I tend to disagree with in other people's reviews of RtRL is that the ending was a failure. (STOP! STOP reading if you don't want to be spoiled.) First of all, I haven't even seen that much Chinese cinema, but even I know they ain't big on the happy endings. So if you think that Gong Li is going to--I dunno, I can't even come up with a possible happy ending to this story, frankly. Secondly, a number of people seem to think that Gong Li's character is "strong" at the beginning of the movie and then becomes weak.

I have so many problems with this. For one, I don't think she's strong to begin with. She's petty and childish and bratty, which is understandable since she's a nineteen year old who's pissed off by having to leave university, but the fact that people see that behavior as strong is a sad indictment, I think. Secondly, what happens to her at the end is that she goes "mad." We'll leave aside the disturbing judgment that strong people couldn't/wouldn't have mental breakdowns, because that's definitely also a post for another day. But since in the film, she is directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of two other people due to, in one case, petty revenge, and in the other, a horrible drunken mistake, and that she is already being shunned for another mistake, I think some PTSD and severe depression is absolutely a logical and believable outcome.

Anyway! Interesting and beautiful film.

xoxo