Curse of the Golden Flower

Curse of the Golden Flower (***)

I didn't know it until I read it yesterday, but it certainly didn't surprise me to learn that the Opening Ceremonies to last year's Beijing Olympics were directed by the same person who directed Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and Curse of the Golden Flower, Zhang Yimou. The ceremonies wowed people all over the world, as they were massive in scale and the planning and coordination that went into them seemed nearly impossible. Whereas America was content to honor Muhammad Ali and allow him to deliberately walk his way over and light the Olympic torch during the '96 games in Atlanta, Yimou had dudes running sideways along the top of the stadium while seemingly thousands of people played drums in sequence. Yimou's movies have a lot of scenes that evoke the same feeling. They pay homage to the long-running tradition of Chinese wire-fighting movies, where every character seems to have a God-like aura and basic of physics are pretty much a passing triviality. Yimou takes full advantage of modern day CGI technology to play up this concept as much as possible. There's no such thing as one archer shooting one arrow in a Zhang Yimou movie. Rather, there's going to be arrows being fired, they're going to be fired all at once from a seemingly endlessly sized army, moving in a robot-like unison, and about half of them will then be cleaved in two in a split second by one of the main characters waving his halberd around. The thing is, even with these orgies of visuals going on, Hero and House of Flying Daggers managed to be extremely good movies with very deep characters who form intimate relationships. Hero presents itself as a deceptively straight-forward martial arts movie and manages to tell a compelling mystery while exploring questions of morality and dispensing nuggets of zen-like philosophy. House of Flying Daggers told a classic tragic love story in a visually interesting way that still managed to remain deeply personal. Curse of the Golden Flower has many similar visuals as its predecessor, and in some scenes outdoes them in their technical impressiveness, but the underlying base of the film just isn't really all that interesting by comparison.

The movie takes place almost entirely within the confines of the Forbidden City during the Tang Dynasty, which I believe is named such due to the prevalence of artificially flavored orange drink in China at the time. The current emperor is Ping (Chow Yun-Fat), who at first glance seems to be, if nothing else, a strong and capable leader. Early on though, we begin to realize that Ping has some skeletons in his closet, although, based on what we see of the inner-workings of the Forbidden City in the movie, he probably doesn't actually have a closet, but rather organizes his clothes using some strange, giant device that requires about 50 servants to operate and maintain. Prince Jai, Ping's first born son and heir to the throne, has just returned from "the frontier" as the film begins, and, after an impromptu father-son sparring match, Ping seems pleased with his progress as a fighter and leader. The Emperor's second son, Prince Wan, meanwhile, has remained within the walls of the Forbidden City, and has apparently spent most of his time while his brother was away doing the horizontal monster mash. He's had a quasi-incestuous relationship with the woman who is not his birth mother, but is the current Emperess (Gong Li), and his now secretly involved with the daughter of the Imperial doctor. He seems to have somewhat of a rivalry with Jai for who should be the true heir to the throne. There is a third son as well, Yu, who seems quieter than his older siblings at first but not because, we learn later, he has no opinion on any of the goings on in his family.

Not long after all this is set up, we get the main hook of the story: Emperor Ping is secretly hiding a slow-acting poison in his wife's "medication" for anemia. He goes to great lengths to hide this, but not great enough, and the Empress's discovery of her husband's plot against her leads to a power struggle, and divided loyalties amongst the sons. The conflict comes to a head on the night of the start of the Chrysanthemum Festival, (they don't really explain the significance of this celebration) when the Forbidden City erupts in violence between the various factions loyal to different members of the royal family. These action scenes are quite amazing in their technical excellence, and at times rival some of the Lord of the Rings battles in their sheer size, and in the amount of what is going on in a single shot through the use of CGI. However, for all the care that went into making them, I thought there was a certain hollowness to them.

What bothers me most, I think, is just how much outward destruction is caused through the royal family's very insular conflict. In the various stages of the climactic battle, we see assassins perched on the ceiling swiftly cut through about a dozen unsuspecting soldiers using metal scythes connected to ropes that they throw, soldiers getting impaled as they try and breach a spiked wall that's been set up in the city courtyard, and basically get killed in all sorts of other creative ways. In one part in particular, I couldn't help but think of the Dynasty Warriors games, as Jai continuously slaughters a host of troops who have surrounded him and are attempting to capture him alive. Their tactic of just sort of gradually trying to inch toward him in lock step clearly doesn't work, but they just sort of mindlessly continue doing it, as if that's the only think they know how to do, like a particularly slow-witted AI controlled soldier in a video game.

After the battle is over, we see servants pour out from every direction, to roll out new carpets to replace the blood-soaked ones, and to put out new chrysanthemums, since a bunch of them got knocked over during the battle. None of the servants nor any of the soliders give any clear evidence that they really know the full extent of what's going on, or that they really care at all about the royal family's issues. The battle doesn't really seem to mean anything for them, except another hurdle that they're going to have to get over while they do their duty paying deference to their leaders and setting up for the festival. Its probably true that throughout much of Imperial China, and probably through out much of the history of any country led by divine royalty, that the actions and motivations of the royal family often weren't in the best interest of the "common-folk." I'm not saying that the movie isn't accurate in its depiction. But what bothered me is that there isn't really a voice for the common person in the movie. The only characters outside of the royal family who are developed at all, are the Imperial Doctor, his wife, and his daughter, and in their case its only because they all have a role in the subterfuge going on within the Emperor's family. All the other countless people within the walls of the Forbidden City just sort of run around as specks of CGI, their purpose being nothing except to be virtual stagehands, moving props around during battles the meanings of which are only significant to a few select people, and maybe get killed in the process. Even beyond the sort of moral hazard that this creates, the movie just has a clostrophobic feel to it. Some of the best scene in Yimou's pervious works were scenes like the bamboo forest chase in House of Flying Daggers. Here there's a similar scene after the Imperial Doctor is promoted to governor of an outlying province and ends up getting chased on horseback through a mountainous region. Its probably the most exciting scene in the movie, there's just not enough of it.

The power struggle for the throne and for the life of the Emperess was an interesting enough plot to hold my interest, but I just didn't feel that the sum total of the movie was as substantive as Yimou's other movies. Hero had a lot of the same CGI-driven battles, and in much the same way focused only on a few central characters while the commoners toiled around them, but I found Hero to be a much more thoughtful and more interesting movie. A cental part of Hero is a scroll of calligraphy Jet Li's character gives to the Emperor, (different Emperor, obviously) the character on which is one of 20 different ways to write the word "Sword." The Emperor studies it and has a revelation about what it represents and what sort of beliefs about the nature of combat Jet Li's character holds. To me, that was more interesting than anything said by Emperor Ping or any other character in Curse of the Golden Flower. There is a scene in Curse where the family is sitting around eating a meal ceremoniously, and Ping explains how the layout of the elaborate table and carpeting that they're sitting around represents the universe, which seems like its going to head down the same path as the calligraphy scene in Hero. It shows up again at the end of the film, but the symbolism there seems kind of obvious and not very deep by comparison. If I watch Curse more, I may notice things that I didn't initally that change my view of the movie, but my first impression was that it doesn't have quite the impact that either Hero or House of Flying Daggers has.

Curse of the Golden Flower is an entertaining movie. There are some beautiful and technically impressive shots, the story will hold your interest, and the music and cinematography similarly interesting. If I had to pick one film to represent Zhang Yimou's work, though, out of what I've seen, I likely wouldn't pick this one.