Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) Dir: Zhang Yimou
“Gold and jade on the outside, rot and decay on the inside.” -- Zhang Yimou
Curse of the Golden Flower is a dysfunctional family drama taken to an absurd and epic level. What starts as a battle of wits escalates into an all out war, as two opposing forces, the physical manifestations of the matriarch's and patriarch's psyches, clash in a bloody battle for the ages. A family is torn apart by delusions and attempted power-grabs, sons are pitted against each other and their father, incestuous affairs abound, and a mother's deceitful love is used as the catalyst for the ultimate coup d'etat, all in an attempt to usurp the throne from an unfaithful emperor and bring ruin to a dynasty overcome with material excess and corrupted spirits. Zhang Yimou's latest wuxia pian is
Dynasty meets
Oldboy meets Peking opera, all amidst a martial arts backdrop choreographed by Ching Siu Tung and filmed with a delectable attention to detail.
Curse of the Golden Flower is full of contradictions. It is a visually beautiful, and illustrious film, and yet its characters are sickening and disgusting. The beauty this film possesses is unsettling, and the actions of the main characters are dictated by this very dichotomy. Chow Yun Fat, as the emperor, turns in the performance of his career. Known mainly as a “good-guy,” or an “honorable-thief”, his turn as a despicable, and bold, father-figure, clinging to uphold the status quo of his crumbling empire, may surprise some viewers. Even before, when Fat has played more “villianous” roles (such as the assassin in
The Killer), his charm and pleasant demeanor shone through, and these characters became the ultimate anti-heroes - Chow Yun Fat makes it easy for audiences to love his characters, even when they are not upstanding citizens. However, in
Curse, he is downright evil, and one sequence in particular may forever taint his good-natured persona.
Gong Li also delivers an amazing performance as the empress. As her motives are revealed through calculated conversations and sleight-of-hand placement of her pawns, her physical sickness and spiritual decay bubble to an ugly head; not even Li's own stunning and beautiful physique can hide the decrepit monster that lies beneath. Each character in the narrative has something to hide, and every performer perfectly captures their character's hidden agenda. Nothing any of these characters does feels forced, but every action is due to a consequential turn of events - the reactions to the actions are written and performed with great skill.
And speaking of skill, I cannot go on any further without mentioning the man of the hour: “Tony” Ching Siu Tung. With
Curse, he delivers the goods once again - and he has again expanded the breadth of his already encompassing repertoire. For the most part, Ching has traded the intimate one-on-one duels of
Hero, and the finely crafted smaller battles of films such as
Butterfly and Sword, or
New Dragon Gate Inn, for large scale skirmishes with hundreds of skilled combatants. He has taken the intricate choreography of a few ballet-like swordsman, and amplified it to an absurd level, as dozens upon dozens of twirling dervishes are sliced, diced, and maimed, as the they fall, jump and slash their way to a bloody hell. The combatants are, after all, at the mercy of two lunatic leaders, and this trait is never lost on how the battles play out, proving once again that Ching Siu Tung designs his choreography to fit and work withing the narrative of the given film - a sign of a master craftsman.
If there is a fault with the film, it is that it offers too much - full-on sensory overload. Zhang Yimou fills every inch of his cinematic tapestry with something to gawk at, or some strange sound to pique our auditory senses, mirroring the gross excess of the film's dysfunctional family. The film is almost too vibrant, and almost too jam packed with raw emotion. Yimou piles it on with reckless abandon - and yet he gets away with it because of the very story he is telling. Where as the superfluous, but gorgeous, eye-candy in this year's other big-budget wuxia pian,
The Banquet, does little to advance the narrative, in
Curse of the Golden Flower, it is the narrative - excess is at the core of the film's thematic language. The film is all about the political, social, and domestic decay of a family squirming in material and spiritual decadence - and it is both a glorious and disgusting thing to witness.