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Movie Title: Curse of the Golden Flower
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Recalling the significant reviews of “Curse of the Golden Flower” upon its release, I seem to remember a lovely split decision. There were those that proclaimed the film a tawdry and violent melodrama while others declared it a gorgeous story. Well, in all fairness, it is a attractive, yet tawdry, excessively violent melodramatic account. And I mean that in all the best ways! Chinese director Zhang Yimou has effect together an eye-popping spectacle of sets, costumes, and effects–complete with his worn flair for dreamlike action sequences and an fantastic color palette.

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Telling a soapy fable of dysfunction within Emperor Ping’s clan circa The Tang Dynasty (928 A.D.), “Curse” has all the lurid ingredients of a modern-day potboiler. There are illicit affairs, murderous schemes, generational secrets, and gross acts of violence. Similar to the setup of “The Lion in Winter,” “Curse” brings the Ping family together and lets them attack each other with a refreshingly unhinged viciousness. But while “Lion’s” carnage was largely verbal, no such claim can be made with this film. With elements of “King Lear” firmly in dwelling, the fling of “Curse” accelerates so rapidly–you know the characters are headed for exertion.

Central to the powerful cast is the beautiful Gong Li as the Empress. As the catalyst of most of the film’s action, Li is the film’s most pivotal performer. The female center of this “Flower” (which includes Chow Yun Rotund as her husband and their three sons/heirs), Li practically devours the role. Elephantine of passion, rage, lust, and plenty of secrets–she has never been given a showier role and definitely rises to the occasion. The performances are so obedient, so alive, you want to stick with the sage to the bitter destroy. And no matter how depraved this film can accept (and the madcap finale certainly pushes veteran sensibilities), it is always grounded with the actors.

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Forget Shakespeare’s most violent tragedies, “Curse” sports a body count that even the Bard would surely envy. Not since the wickedly over-the-top killing spree during the finale of DiPalma’s “Scarface” has a movie devolved into such an unabashed exhibit of bloody lunacy. Ridiculous at every turn, the film succeeds by embracing its excesses. The final showdown left me marveling at the staged choreography and laughing at the inspired, yet insane, debauchery. I won’t contend that “Curse” is an artistic masterwork that rivals Yimou’s previous films “House of Flying Daggers” and “Hero”–but I will say that it is massive entertainment. A frantic, blood-soaked opera of lust and vengeance (with no apologies), I loved “Curse of the Golden Flower.” KGHarris, 11/07.

I label that an earlier reviewer saw the ‘making-of’ featurette. and it’s

a apt intro into peeling away the layers of this quasi-Shakespearean melodrama. There’s something dramatists like, the theme of the darkness beneath the beauty.

Slow starting, Director Zhang moves faster and faster telling the story of unfolding faces (in an asian sense) and the complexities of relationships,

veering every so-often in to soap-operatics. Yet with extravagant graphics/ production qualities and a nice pattern of on-and-off action with teary or sneer-y confrontations and trysts, even the maybe too-dramatic elements work well.

One measure might be that in re-seeing, the layers regain more intense and understandable, adding weight to the conflicts; a plus for buyers versus renters.

Now, if only a quality version of RAISE THE RED LANTERN would be released, Zhang Yimou’s stature as a world-class director would be rightly, finally, established. With his successes this millennium, it might fair happen for the man…

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Thyromine

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