Curse of the Golden Flower (R)
Scott:
Scott: Tonight I am reviewing Curse of the Golden Flower
(Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia), a movie based in 10th century China, about the machinations of an emperor and his family.
Mike was not able to make this screening.
Scott: What did I think about this?
It was a very colorful movie. From the beginning to the very end, color is not far from the screen. In some areas it was like looking though a kaleidoscope at a rainbow. The color was the best thing about the movie. Just so you know, that’s never supposed to be the best thing about a movie.
The Emperor (Chow Yun Fat) has come home from a long trip (battle or sightseeing, we never find out) to his wife and First (Ye Liu) and Third son (Qin Junjie). He picked up his Second son (Jay Chou) on the way home. You know it’s a feel good movie when the Second son and dad have a sword fight early in the movie. And soon thereafter, you get the impression that not everything is right in the imperial palace.
Gong Li stars as the Empress and the movie centers around her, her relationship to the Emperor and to the First and Second sons. Soon after the Emperor gets home, she starts feeling ill. Not sure why she is feeling ill, she has her suspicions that it is the Emperors doing.
I don’t want to go into anymore detail than that so I won’t ruin the movie for you.
Here are two things you need to know: First, this is not a fighting movie. The fight and battle scenes are few and far between and with the exception of the final scenes at the end, all of them are short. I came into this movie thinking Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo hu cang long), or maybe Hero (Ying xiong), but this is more dramatic than those were.
Second, there are subtitles. Some people can’t stand movies with them so I have to let you know they are there. I personally stop noticing them early in movies and they blend into the movie for me. One thing that I have always found interesting is the translation for foreign dialog to English. The character on screen says something like ‘sho-zu-now’ and it translates to ‘I was walking in the park when I saw a bird and it was chirping.’ I always ask myself how that little sound could be translated into a long sentence in English. Don’t know how they do that, but you see it a lot in this movie. By the way this entire paragraph can be translated into the Mandarin word ‘schez-uk-de’.
The colors like I mentioned before were something to see. The entire palace grounds filled with golden chrysanthemums was beautiful. The outfits that the actors wear were also colorful. It’s interesting to see the behavior of all of the characters be so rigid and the clothing be so ornate.
Director Yimou Zhang also directed House of Flying Daggers (Shi mian mai fu) and Hero. Hero I enjoyed for the action as well as the story. Some scenes in that, particularly the final scene I still remember clearly. With this movie I am going to remember a specific hallway more than anything else.
What do I rate this?
I didn’t like it. It was long and jumpy and never moved beyond a slow crawl. I give it a 2 overall and a 2 for drama. It didn’t live up to the expectations I had set upon seeing the trailer. It seemed like an action movie from the trailer and that just isn’t what it is.
