Post by Dracula on Jul 15, 2023 9:14:10 GMT -5
Full River Red(3/20/2023)
This film, it turns out, is something of an origin story for a famous patriotic Chinese poem which was written in the 12th Century, allegedly by a general/folk hero named Yue Fei. This film picks up about five years after that general’s death and is set over the course of a single night in which a handful of characters run around a fortified Song Dynasty compound trying to uncover a plot that’s afoot involving the murder of a Jin Dynasty diplomat and the theft of a confidential letter. It’s a fun concept in theory but I think aspects of it were perhaps lost in translation, both because it involves historical and political machinations that outsiders like myself aren’t very familiar with and also because those hybrid subtitles were kind of hard to read and were particularly unhelpful for a movie like this that’s filled with names and twists to keep track of. This is also definitely a movie that was made with the approval of the CCP and while it doesn’t feel particularly political for much of its running time it does eventually pull a Hero and reveal itself to be going in the direction of propaganda in its very finale, though not in a way that’s particularly poorly executed or offensive as these things go.
The bigger problems here are just some questionable artistic decisions that feel like attempts to make the film a bit more popular with the masses. There’s some questionable comedy to be found here and the film has a very irritating musical score that actively “Mickey Mouses” to actions on screen at times and even more curiously indulges in some anachronistic sounding tunes during scene transitions that almost sounds like some sort of Chinese equivalent of hyperpop. On top of that the film’s visual style just feels kind of bland by Zhang’s standards. There are certainly some well-built sets and some cool looking costumes but the cinematography, which competent, isn’t doing anything terribly beautiful or exciting and at times its digital nature shows itself in unflattering ways. If you want to see a Zhang Yimou period piece filled with palace intrigue you would be much better served by his kind of slept on 2018 film Shadow which did pretty much everything this movie does but does it with a lot more style and a lot less… patriotism. All that having been said as “main melody” movies go you can do a lot worse than this and if this movie (which set box office records in China) buys Zhang some more clout to make another movie like Coming Home or One Second it would probably be worth it, but from where I sit this isn’t what I want from him at all.
** out of Five
Most cinephilles know the name Zhang Yimou but they tend not to actually show up to or get excited for his new movies when they show up in theaters. Granted, the distributors, frequently don’t help with this. Case in point, I didn’t even know he had a new movie out right now until I happened to notice it in theaters listings the day I saw it and I’m pretty sure it has been largely been marketed towards the Chinese diaspora rather than the film buffs that that foreign language films are usually trying to reach… to the point where the version I saw actually had simultaneous subtitles in both English and what I’m guessing was Cantonese. As I watched the movie though I kind of see why this wasn’t given more of a red carpet stateside as it does feel like it was made a bit more for the Chinese masses than for the arthouse crowd that Zhang has been able to reach in the past. Zhang has been in and out of favor with China at different points in his career for both political and commercial reasons and at this point seems to be working on a pretty clear “one for me, one [sometimes two] for them” kind of setup with the powers that be. For example his excellent 2020 film One Second was one for him and I’m going to hazard a guess that his 2022 film Sniper, about a Chinese sharpshooter celebrated for killing over two hundred American soldiers during the Korean War, was one for them. That one wasn’t released here for some mysterious reason, this one was but I think this was also “one for them” but is perhaps one where Zhang had a little more freedom to mess around with.
This film, it turns out, is something of an origin story for a famous patriotic Chinese poem which was written in the 12th Century, allegedly by a general/folk hero named Yue Fei. This film picks up about five years after that general’s death and is set over the course of a single night in which a handful of characters run around a fortified Song Dynasty compound trying to uncover a plot that’s afoot involving the murder of a Jin Dynasty diplomat and the theft of a confidential letter. It’s a fun concept in theory but I think aspects of it were perhaps lost in translation, both because it involves historical and political machinations that outsiders like myself aren’t very familiar with and also because those hybrid subtitles were kind of hard to read and were particularly unhelpful for a movie like this that’s filled with names and twists to keep track of. This is also definitely a movie that was made with the approval of the CCP and while it doesn’t feel particularly political for much of its running time it does eventually pull a Hero and reveal itself to be going in the direction of propaganda in its very finale, though not in a way that’s particularly poorly executed or offensive as these things go.
The bigger problems here are just some questionable artistic decisions that feel like attempts to make the film a bit more popular with the masses. There’s some questionable comedy to be found here and the film has a very irritating musical score that actively “Mickey Mouses” to actions on screen at times and even more curiously indulges in some anachronistic sounding tunes during scene transitions that almost sounds like some sort of Chinese equivalent of hyperpop. On top of that the film’s visual style just feels kind of bland by Zhang’s standards. There are certainly some well-built sets and some cool looking costumes but the cinematography, which competent, isn’t doing anything terribly beautiful or exciting and at times its digital nature shows itself in unflattering ways. If you want to see a Zhang Yimou period piece filled with palace intrigue you would be much better served by his kind of slept on 2018 film Shadow which did pretty much everything this movie does but does it with a lot more style and a lot less… patriotism. All that having been said as “main melody” movies go you can do a lot worse than this and if this movie (which set box office records in China) buys Zhang some more clout to make another movie like Coming Home or One Second it would probably be worth it, but from where I sit this isn’t what I want from him at all.
** out of Five
