RAISE THE RED LANTERN Movie Review

In the 1920s in China, Songlian (Gong Li), an educated 19-year-old beauty, is forced into marriage as the fourth wife of a wealthy and powerful old man. She soon discovers that each wife has her own separate quarters and servants, and spends most of her time battling to attract her husband's attention. (A red lantern is placed outside the door of the wife the old man chooses to spend the night with.) Over the course of her first year in this luxurious servitude, Songlian's humiliation, resentment, and fury swell until rebellion, as self-defeating as it may be, is her only impulse. Zhang Yimou's thrilling Raise the Red Lantern is an extraordinary work of art, as visually dazzling as it is deeply heartbreaking. Gong Li's third film collaboration with Zhang produced what may be her most delicately nuanced and memorable performance, as a woman struggling to accept a life formed by circumstance and tradition, but ultimately—and nobly—unable to bury her dignity beneath a silken mountain of “privilege.” From the novel Wives and Concubines by Su Tong. Academy Award Nominee, Best Foreign Language Film.

NEXT STOP … Red Sorghum, The Story of Qiu Ju, Life of Oharu

1991 (PG) 125m/C CH Gong Li, Ma Jingwu, He Caifei, Cao Cuifeng, Jin Shuyuan, Kong Lin, Ding Weimin; D: Zhang Yimou. British Academy Awards ‘92: Best Foreign Film; Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards ‘92: Best Cinematography; New York Film Critics Awards ‘92: Best Foreign Film; National Society of Film Critics Awards ‘92: Best Cinematography, Best Foreign Film; Nominations: Academy Awards ‘91: Best Foreign-Language Film. VHS, LV, Closed Caption ORI, BTV