Curse of the Golden Flower

Yesterday nothing to do..... Then tze decided to pay for half of my movie ticket so we went Toa Payoh to watch Curse of the Golden Flower......

Thanks haha...... But hor, the rest of you dont go and bug her for movie tickets hor..... Unless you get her presents from Taiwan.... Haha

Anyway hope to meet the rest of you soon.... The presents are piling up on my table and I want to clear out everything....

Though now I can use an occupied table as an excuse to my mom not to do homework... Haha

Back to the movie......

Curse of the Golden Flower is Zhang Yimou's latest film, loosely based on the landmark Chinese narrative written by Cao Yu, Thunderstorm (雷雨)

Masked under a big budget and grand settings, it is really a socio-political commentary on China at heart..... At this point, Zhang Yimou has already hauled himself out of the pit that consisted of his last two films, Hero and House of the Flying Daggers.....

He failed with the previous two because he was being more of a cinematographer rather than a director.....

The crysanthenums used and imagery of rebellions wearing scarfs of crysanthenum were an obvious reference to China's tumultuous political history..... Blood was often seen drenching the scarfs that the rebellions wore.... indicating the bloodiness of the political sacrifices of the past

Iconography was put to good use by Zhang here......

The scene where the rebellions were trapped in a square-like yard was Zhang's take on the Tiananmen Square Incident, the part of Chinese History that the communist government chose to be oblivous to.....

Images of soldiers being crushed under heavy juggernault iron walls and being shot to death by arrows were reminiscent of rebellion students being rolled over by army tanks as well as shot by guns on that fateful day on Tiananmen Square.....

The King's iron-fisted rule on his country as well as family ultimately resulted in lives being lost on a national scale.... Zhang is stamping perhaps his personal opinion on the communist government here.....

With such solid layering in the script, it is probably Zhang's best film out of the three martial art blockbusters that he made in recent years.....

Despite all these mertis, Zhang has still bit way to go if he wants to catch up with Ang Lee's benchmark gongfu film, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and acheive something great

It is indeed a joy in watching Gongli act.... If you are able to see past her cleavage and concentrate on her acting, you would realise Gongli has a charismatic screen presence, carrying her role with natural gravitas.... A very much welcome change from the hollow prancing by another Chinese Superstar: Zhang Ziyi

Chow Yun Fatt is not exactly at his best like during Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon but he still carries the role with enough dignity....

The rest is not worth a mention, not even Liu Ye

The martial art cheorography is not well done, and looks suspiciously like Yuen Wo Ping's style

It is easy to dismiss all these big budget martial arts epics as cultural products made to pander to the Westerners......

But not all of them are like that.....So I go to the cinema time and time again, in case I miss a good one.....

And I am glad I didnt miss Curse

Rating: 3.5 stars