The Curse of the Golden Flower

Starring: Chow Yun Fat, Gong Li, Jay Chou, Liu Ye, Chen Jin, Ni Dahong, Li Man, Qin Junjie

Written by: Zhang Yimou, Wu Nan and Bian Zhihong

Directed by: Zhang Yimou

Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Rated: R

Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower is big. Really big. There’s drama of remarkable power and action of unfathomable density weighing down its relatively short two hours onscreen. This is the epic story of a civilization that has reached such an advanced state of order that disorder needs to lash out in overwhelming tragedy just to even things up. Set in antiquity, the story moves in slow, broad arcs, gradually accelerating to the inevitable horde level bloodbath that awaits at its climax.

Somewhere in the sweet-smelling haze of ancient China, the Emperor (Chow Yn Fat) has returned to his palace with his second son, Prince Jai (Jay Chou), after a long absence. The Emperor’s relations with his wife, the Empress (Gong Li), haven’t been all that good lately. As cold and distant as the two are, matters aren’t helped by the fact that the Empress is quite ill. We find out relatively early in the film that the medicines he makes for her may actually be causing her illness. News of this gradually circulates amongst high-ranking members of the family, setting in motion events that will almost certainly involve a massively violent coup during the grand festival of Chong Yang.

Director Zhang Yimou (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) refers to The Curse of the Golden Flower as an action film and he’s probably about half right by US standards. The action only fills about half of the film. Much of the other half is spent building up dramatic tension that justifies and animates the action. The drama supports the action pretty well for the most part. Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li make for an exquisitely matched pair. Much of the rest of the supporting cast does an admirable job of helping to thicken the plot, but there really isn’t much ingenuity in the story here. This is a story that may as well be as old as time and anyone old enough to get into the theater has seen it all before countless times. The cast freshens the old story up a bit with compelling emotion, but it drags for much of the beginning until events fall into place, allowing it to rush toward the final scenes.

Once things get going, Yimou’s pacing is riveting. Plots are hatched. People find out things about other people. Poison is administered by servants on the finest plates. Sons question their father. Flowers are stitched in gold with trembling hands. It’s all quite interesting. But it’s nothing that hasn’t been seen before. It all leads to large scale warfare in ancient China, which isn’t anything that hasn’t been seen before. What does feel fresh here is the size of the large scale epic warfare in ancient China. I’ll refer back to the first sentence in this review. Two massive armies engage during a festival in the Tang dynasty. Noble warriors in gold armor led by Prince Jie (a charismatic Jay Chow) square-off against the emperor’s darkly clad warriors. Vibrant colors. Symmetry. Armies so big they look like swarms of locust erupting into elegant violence. Storming the palace never looked so good. Yimou expertly sculpts shots with ridiculously large numbers of people throughout the film. The palace is seen as a small nation in many, many moments. In a rare and inspired bit of kinetic storytelling, we see an army of servants clean up after the final battle with meticulous precision. It’s a very emotionally charged moment. In its own way, that brutally efficient clean up holds more weight than the battle that preceded it. Yimou has made an awe inspiring bit of cinema that really needs to be seen in a theatre to be fully appreciated. VS