‘Flower’ impresses with visual flair
By Alison Ruderman
Published on Monday, January 22, 2007
"Curse of the Golden Flower" dazzles with spectacular fight scenes.
In the realm of martial arts epics, Zhang Yimou's "Curse of the Golden Flower" sits squarely between the lovely "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and the lowbrow "Kung Fu Hustle." It's no revolution in its genre, but its visual beauty is something to drool over: The action is drenched in rich gold, extreme close-ups register faces taut with unease and fury and color-coordinated armies clash in battles that might as well be "Lord of the Rings" in a Skittles commercial.
This being Oscar season, it's no wonder that bombast and posturing are all over the silver screen nowadays. But "Flower" is less concerned with golden statuettes than with sheer spectacle. It's a marriage of showy swordsman choreography and outrageous swank.
All the opulence is deceiving, though. The royal family in "Curse," -- based on the real-life T'ang dynasty of the 10th century -- is at odds with itself, ripped apart by betrayal, secrecy, corruption, favoritism and incest. The self-serving Emperor Ping (Chow Yun-Fat) instructs his henchman to poison his wife, Phoenix (Gong Li), over the course of ten days. Phoenix, however, is no pretty trophy-empress; for years she has feigned ignorance about a deep royal secret and intends to exact her final revenge before the poison kicks in.
Each of her three sons, involved in tangled subplots of romance and jealousy, enters the burgeoning tempest, which climaxes at the annual Chrysanthemum Festival, a fittingly ironic and colorful setting for the bloody coup.
The palace itself is a brilliant setting for the film's human drama. The rigid protocol of the royal family forces the empress to take her daily medicine, though she knows her husband has contaminated the formula. The intrigue at play is satisfying and rousing.
Unfortunately, the protocol of the throne also makes for scenes of painful formality; the three princes refer to their parents in the third person even in their presence. Dialogue, especially the long passages of exposition, gets downright clunky much of the time.
Thankfully, all dialogue is brought to a standstill in the film's second act, when gilded-armor armies and dark, spidery warriors swoop in to steal the scenes. Though sudden, the shift from suspenseful drama to high-flying action is sharply and successfully executed. In both halves of "Flower," the emotional high points are vivid and intense.
Given all the scheming and secrecy of the plot, it's a safe bet that Zhang Yimou was aiming for Shakespearean-level intrigue. "Curse of the Golden Flower" doesn't hit that mark, but that matters very little -- its absurd good looks are a triumph either way.