Word: zhang
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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RAISE THE RED LANTERN Directed by Zhang Yimou...
...physical splendor of Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern can seem at best anachronistic, at worst reactionary. Even the film's nomination for this year's foreign-language Academy Award might attest to the bland gentility of its virtues, if only because Red Lantern reprises the dour theme and visual extravagance of 1988's big winner, The Last Emperor. But this obscures the point of a brave, passionate and highly entertaining work of art. In the best movies, style reflects substance. And in this story of a wealthy man in 1920s China and the four women he keeps...
...emotional anchor for all Zhang's films is Gong Li -- her face a map of cool insurrection, her figure proud and voluptuously Western. But Red Lantern offers other, more exalted orders of ogling. As it plays out its melodrama, it | radiates a ravishing color scheme; it delights in the symmetrical framing of gorgeous objects, human and architectural. For the Westerner, it offers a tour of exotic lands and customs: China in its last imperial gasp. How very sumptuous, you will say of the visual style -- though Red Lantern was made for an impossibly thrifty $1 million...
...other times, an artist will refer to his roots by inscribing a tribute within the actual painting. Thankfully, the organizers, Dr. Claudia Brown and Dr. Ju-hsi Chou, frequently inform the viewer of this, as in the case of Zhang Pengchong's Landscape: Brush Marks in Blue and Green (early 18th cent.) This pain ting's subtle coloring is inspired by Sheng Zhou, an artist who worked 300 years earlier...
...colors -- bright, sensuous, all enveloping -- tell the story of a young Chinese woman, her brutal husband and her timid lover. Fate enshrouds them, as it has Zhang Yimou's beautiful film: Ju Dou has never played publicly in China, and the authorities tried unsuccessfully to rescind its Oscar nomination as Best Foreign Film...