Raise the Red Lantern 4K 1991

“Raise the Red Lantern” is Zhang Yimou's fourth film. The beautiful Songlian is Mr. Fen's fourth wife. The director must surpass his two previous successes and erase from the audience’s memory his only failure to date. The heroine must not suffocate in the poisonous fumes of the flower garden, where the music, food, and atmosphere are dictated by the woman around whose bed the lanterns are lit tonight: the master loves it when formalities are observed… and when everything takes place in the light.

A newlywed among three living wives, the “mistress” of a house where women, like dolls, are each placed in their own box, in their secluded chambers around the courtyard-well. Existence dictates the rituals. Ceremonial visits from one room to another, tea parties interrupted at the steward’s command, the bows of strangers’ children warily greeting their fourth aunt. Tradition-steeped squabbles with the third sister, meals, and movements beneath the canopy. Imou, true to his style of expressive realism, transforms the active background into a dramatic device, inventing ever-new, unprecedented “Chinese ceremonies,” as conventional as the crimson hue of Gaoliao wine. All this affectation seems, in summer, like the senile ramblings of a culture past its prime; in fall, like the laws of nature; and in winter, almost like salvation, for only it helps fill the joyless hours and give existence the appearance of a purpose—even if that purpose is reduced to a plate of spinach.

Thanks to the actresses’ restrained performances and a distinctive filming style that alternates between close-ups and long shots, the director succeeds in conveying both the external and internal aspects of ritual. The ashes of a dead tradition, observed with particular zeal now that the Empire is crumbling beyond the estate’s walls. And beneath it—the smoldering embers of an all-pervading, crude, unconscious lust. It doesn’t matter that the husband here is merely a symbol, an anonymous bearer of the jade rod, a deity sending down a deluge of social benefits. The wives’ genuine eagerness is fueled by the anticipation of triumph over their rivals and by conditioned reflexes. A close-up shows the wick penetrating the lantern, igniting a flame in this crimson valley. A rolling staccato—the sound of massage hammers—compels all the women of the estate to slowly tilt their heads back and rub their feet; and toward the end of the film, even the most sensitive female viewers… The golden light of sunset spills over the tiled rooftops, but not into the courtyards. Here there is a sun of its own—an entire constellation of the color of joy, the color of slavery.

As is typical of Yimou’s early works, the film has few negative characters and, at the same time, no positive ones at all. There are only the strong and the weak, the living and the lifeless. But while in *Gaolian* and *Jiudou* his heroines evoked sympathy and respect, Songlian—who shares their same face—resembles a wounded animal in a porcelain shop, darting about in fear and smashing everything in her path. The trouble lies not in the intrigues of the concubines, nor in the indulgence of a deity who allows his playthings to do whatever they please to one another, so long as it doesn’t lead to death. The problem lies within her. Her six months of university education turned out to be a curse—a fatal inability to accept the fate she had chosen for herself. She lacks what others possess: neither the wisdom that matures in the darkness where the red lanterns no longer shine, nor the indulgent kindness rooted in the secret knowledge that one’s feet can be rubbed not only by one’s husband, nor even the cunning that helps coax out an extra sunny day…

As the camera pulls away, it captures Gong Li wandering through the courtyard, absentmindedly pacing it, as if her character were locked in a prison cell. It resembles madness, but the difference isn’t all that obvious: after all, there is still no way out, no deliverance, and by this world’s standards, Songlian is insane from the start. She takes risks by lying when a smile and submission would suffice; she relies on those over whom she triumphed just yesterday; she lashes out in response to a pinch, failing to grasp the truth obvious to the other women: it’s foolish to spit into a well when you’re already living in it. With restraint, a touch of detachment, and only occasionally punctuating an emotional scene with an exclamation mark, the master, in his inimitable visual style, reveals a fracture. Rigidity without strength, blows in the dark, and an inevitable outcome. Where “women with the hearts of scorpions” had waged years of attritional battles, wounding little more than pride, a girl with doe-like eyes destroyed two men in three days, without even realizing what she was doing... Zhang Yimou’s fourth film brought him success. Mr. Feng’s fourth marriage turned out to be a failure.