Raise the Red Lantern

Film: Raise the Red Lantern
China, 1991
Directed by Zhang Yimou
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I suspect that Raise the Red Lantern will be one of those films that will haunt me at unexpected moments. It is simultaneously rich and cold, vivid and desolate. This story of a young woman, Songlian, who becomes the fourth (simultaneous) wife of a rich man in 1920s China is credited with sparking a resurgence in tourism to China after the violent protests in Tianenmen Square in 1989. The fact that tourists came to China on the strength of Raise the Red Lantern is remarkable, as the film is entirely set inside the labyrinthine household of the "Master" and his four wives.

As an allegory of the dehumanizing effects of Communist collectivism, the film is powerful. But it is even more powerful as a vivid portrayal of the dehumanization that takes place in patriarchal societies where subjugation in some form is "a woman's fate," Songlian represents the seed of change--a woman who is educated and, we presume, far too independent to put up with the ancient rituals that would bind her forever under the will of a nearly faceless male power. The film never shows us a frontal picture of the Master - he could be anyone, and he stands for everyone. In an article about director Zhang Yimou and his films, Mary Farquahar notes that Songlian's character is more than a toy; she plays an active role in the making of her own destiny as well as dramatically affecting those around her. She writes that Raise the Red Lantern's "narrative power rests on reworking the early 20th century debate on Chinese patriarchy, liberation and modernity." This debate came to a crisis in the Revolution, and "the Chinese Communist Party subsequently claimed that they had liberated the masses from Confucian and capitalist bondage: men, women and children." But was there liberation or merely another form of captivity? At least in the eyes of modern Chinese filmmakers, the Communist Party is seen as another, equally opressive "political patriarchy."

As Desson Howe wrote in his Washington Post review of the film, there is a "stifling quality" to the film that make the moments of emotion all the more exquisite to watch. The movie takes place firmly within the frame of the household, and we find that indeed there is no higher power than the law of the house, where even capital punishment is carried out mercilessly. Howe notes that "[the camera] watches its characters through the confining frames of doorways and archways." Ceremony is of the greatest importance, and while the wives scheme to grab whatever power they can, they are reminded daily that thier only utility is in their ability to please the Master.

It is a breathtaking film, right down to its final scenes, which could be open to interpretation. I found the ending hollow and frustrating, but perhaps that was exactly the point? I hoped for an open revolt and some sort of ultimate crisis of feminine power. Instead, I found myself shaking my head at the screen, saying "no, that's just not right." If we take the ending to mean that Songlian has gone insane, what evidence did we see that would lead us to believe she is so fragile as to snap completely at the sight of a murder? Is it her complicity in the death that forces a complete shut-down? And if the movie is a political analogy, what sort of hopelessness does the protagonist's fate lead us to infer for the masses who, like Songlian, find it impossible to come to terms with the world in which they live and their own responsibility for its continuance?

Earth

Film: Earth
India, 1998
Directed by Deepa Mehta

Readings and Links: ‘Earth’: Unforgettable” by Zarminae Ansari and “‘Earth’: Reviewed by C. J. S. Wallia”

Who among the reviewers did you agree with more and why?

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It was my intention to write this post after viewing not only Earth but also Fire and Water. Unfortunately, the latter two films haven't arrived yet, so I'll dive in now but I hope to be able to come back to this post with a revision after watching the full trilogy.

C.J.S. Wallia and Zarminae Ansari both wrote insightful reviews of Earth, but I find myself siding with Ansariy on nearly every important point. Wallia's numerous objections to the film include its "simplistic" treatment of the "complex history of the partition," the "limited" viewpoint from which the story is told, and the "distorted roles" of the various religious factions and political groups portrayed. I believe Wallia's chief problem with film is that he does not judge the film on its own terms. The limited viewpoint is that of a Parsi child, who understands the partition only in simplistic terms. Earth is not really the story of the partition, it is the story of the end of a childhood. The simple fact that the filmmakers chose to retain the limited viewpoint of the child and not show the story from a wider angle (with a few bothersome exceptions) relieves them from some of the responsibility they may have otherwise had. The "complex history of partition" is not part of Lenny's world, and it's not really part of this story, though it's an important historical issue.

Wallia notes that the novel on which the movie is based is "not come to grips with the events of the partition of the Punjab and the historical roles of the British, the Muslims, the Hindus and the Sikhs." I have not read the novel, Cracking India (originally titled Ice-Candy Man) but I assume that Wallia is sincere, though perhaps mistaken when he states that it is "too weak as a partition story." The reviewer finds the story too weak to present all the various subtleties of the issues involved. But neither the book nor the movie appear to be intended as a "coming to terms" with all the complexities of the issue of partition. Wallia's more serious criticism is that the film "viciously distorts the historical role of the Sikhs in the freedom struggle and during the partition of India to convey the strong impression that they initiated the riots." In viewing the film, I did not get the impression that the responsibility for the riots was laid solely at the feet of the Sikhs - it seemed to me that there was plenty of blame to go around on all sides for the violence and upheaval that both ushered India to independence and broke it into pieces which remain in conflict to this day.

Ansari predicts this type of criticism when he writes that "the movie will undoubtedly offend both sides, since it spares neither, nor holds one as morally superior to the other." Ansari judges the film on its own merits, as a "story of a child’s confusion about the partition, which embodies the confusion of the millions who are eventually affected by it."

I do disagree with Ansari on the following point, however: "[Earth] effectively conveys the reality of the partition and will go a long way in explaining to the rest of the world the cause of the wounds that run deep even today between India and Pakistan." I'm not sure that Earth is capable of explaining the cause of these wounds. Wallia is correct in that it is too superficial to stand in for a history lesson to those who know little about India's past or the current problems in Kashmir, Pakistan, and India. But it's a good starting point, and I got the feeling that is exactly what it was meant to be. The illustration of an end and a starting point for understanding.

Before the Rain

Film: Before the Rain
1994, Macedonia
Directed by Milcho Manchevski

Post a brief (~250–500 words) review of the film you chose and at least one other review of it.

I watched the 1994 Milcho Manchevski film Before the Rain with high expectations. I couldn't help but compare it with another movie that is set in the Balkans (Danis Tanovic's No Man's Land, 2001) which I saw several years ago and loved. Unfortunately, Before the Rain did not live up to the expectations I had for it and it failed to provide any significant historical context for understanding the Balkan conflicts.

It's not hard for me to understand why I prefer No Man's Land as a film. It's a dark, ironic tragicomedy in contrast to Before the Rain, which is as serious a drama as ever took itself too seriously. I prefer existential dilemmas that are couched in their own little absurd conundrums, and this is where No Man's Land excells, while Before the Rain attempts to woo the viewer with its dream-like circularity and repetitions that are a little too obvious and superficial to be instructive. In each of Before the Rain's three sections, someone vomits. Should we pause to consider the deeper meaning of this heavily-made point?

Let's go from start to finish. Part One, Words, shows promise. It is set in Macedonia, where there is a young priest who has taken a vow of silence. He lives in a monastery and is faced with the choice of hiding or turning in a mysterious refugee who is hiding in his attic room. He chooses to hide and feed her, and thig gives the story movement, and at the end of part one, the young refugee is murdered by her own family as she attempts to either flee from them or stop the young priest from leaving her there with her murderous clan. Part One is a pretty compelling short story on film, and if it ended there, I would have found it poignant.

Part Two is home to several scenes which make me wonder if they were included to reach some sort of minimum running time. There are utterly gratuitous scenes: one involving a naked woman in a shower and another involving the same woman, half naked in a Taxi. What these two scenes might hope to tell us about anything or anyone in the movie is beyond me. There is a scene in which a murderous restaurant patron begins shooting everyone in sight with what appears to be a limitless supply of bullets. Yes, we can understand that violence in one country does not necessarily stay there; it spills out and over borders - it touches the innocent. We know that and might be more moved by it if the central characters in part two were not completely made of emotional cardboard. The British female journalist is thoroughly irksome and her Macedonian lover is selfish and hotheaded. Not a couple I am led to care about.

The Madedonian Lover, Alex, becomes the central character in Part Three, which takes place again in Macedonia. A world traveler and photojournalist, he has come home with an apparent death wish. He does not appear to have any drive to affect a change in the forces that are tearing apart his homeland, he goes about his daily life with as much forethought and subtlety as we might expect from one who attempts to have sex with a married lover in a moving taxing in broad London daylight. I kept wondering... does anyone have any sense in this movie at all? What's the lesson here? What do I want to take from this film, what should I have learned?

I wondered how this film could have garnered so much praise - a foreign-language film Oscar Nominations, a glowing review by Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert who said "This is one of the year's best films...Work like this is what keeps me going." Ebert seems to think that the time paradoxes contained within the movie are successful in conveying the idea that we are not trapped by time, but that there is room for escape. But none of our film's characters have much of a chance to escape their fate, and as our professor Jeff pointed out in our online discussion, two of the three fatalities in the film occur from "friendly fire" - people killing their own people, not their enemies.

In the end, the characters are too one-dimensional and the situations too predictible to be truly inspiring. When we find out that Macedonia was not involved in the same level of violence as other Balkan states, the film has even less relevance. Perhaps it was meant as a "dream-warning" for those who thought themselves insulated from the problems occurring in Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo. But the end product seems like a heavy-handed attempt at art-house lecturing, and falls short of almost every goal it sets for itself. One reminder I did take from the viewing: don't take the film-maker's word for it; historical films are not necessarily historically accurate and they may not provide any more context to the issues at hand than the average war film does.

I recommend No Man's Land to anyone who'd like to see a better film set in the Balkans. It is superior to Before the Rain in every measurable way.

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Photo Source: http://faq.macedonia.org/the.arts/btr.html