Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
Raise the Red Lantern is a sumptuous film out of China with interesting characters, strong performances and an intriguing story – other than a rather pedestrian ending. Based on the novel Wives and Concubines by Su Tong, it deals with subjugation of women in China circa 1920, although its theme could be viewed more broadly as relating to subjugation of human liberty by repressive institutions whenever and wherever it occurs.
The Story: The story of Raise the Red Lantern unfolds in the China of 1920, when concubines were commonplace. Songlian (Gong Li) has just married a millionaire, which might seem like cause for rejoicing, but is not. Although Songlian, a 19-year-old beauty, was educated briefly at a University, she had to drop out when her father suddenly died. Her stepmother was unwilling to support her, so Songlian traded her freedom for the certainty of a place to sleep and food to eat, thus sealing her own destiny. She has just joined the household of Master Chen Zuoqian (Ma Jingwu), a wealthy old textile merchant, as his fourth wife. Raise the Red Lantern is the story of her experiences in the Chen household. She is to be our eyes and our guide. Songlian’s arrival as the newest and youngest wife upsets the tenuous balance of the household. She has become the catalyst for jealousies, intensified conflicts, and renewed intrigues.
The large household is comprised of an extensive courtyard with living quarters arrayed all around. Along the sides are the separate apartments for each of the four wives. The master’s quarters are situated at one end of the courtyard in strategic neutrality. Songlian is quickly educated in the ways of the household, which are dictated by family traditions that have existed over many generations. Each night, for example, as the wives stand just outside their respective apartments on a connecting walkway, a male servant announces with great fanfare where the red lanterns will be hung for the evening. The destination of the lanterns indicates which wife will be favored with the master’s attention for that night. Much more is at stake, however, than servicing the master’s sexual proclivities. The wife who is selected rules the roust for a day. She is honored, first, by a parade of the lanterns to her household where they are hung in grand array. Later, she will have her feet bathed, sensuously massaged, and rapped with wooden paddles by an elderly female servant. (The Chinese have had long fascination with the erotic potential of women’s feet.) She will also have the right to pick the menu for all of the family’s meals for the next day. She will be generally pampered and cared for and receive added respect from the household servants.
Songlian enjoys the immediate advantage of being the master’s novelty, but soon discovers that there is great competition among the wives for the privileges that go with the red lanterns. The household is ruled by intrigues, and intrigues within the intrigues. It is a joyless place despite the bright colors and lovely residences – a repressive world of rituals and rivalries. It has the feel of a metaphorical prison from which the women will never be permitted to exit. For Songlian, there is no escape. She is initially furious but soon understands the rules of what amounts to the only game in town and beings to compete as earnestly as the other wives for the honor of the master’s favor.
Though the wives refer to one another as “sister”, they are anything but congenial siblings. Songlian’s rivals each present a different set of challenges. First wife, Yuru (Jin Shuyuan), is quite a bit older than the others and has a grown son. Although she is seldom graced, these days, by the master’s sexual interest, she is nevertheless secure in her position because she has provided the master with a son, which is one of the foremost duties of the wives. With her long experience, she reigns over the other wives in some respects. She is tolerant of the other wives, but aloof and cold.
Second wife, Zhuoyun (Cao Quifen) is solicitous and ingratiating with Songlian and seems, initially, a likely ally for Songlian. Seemingly pleasant and friendly, her Buddha like countenance conceals a hard and calculating schemer. Unlike the first wife, Zhuoyun has only provided the master with a daughter. She invites Songlian to tea in order to sew seeds of distrust in Songlian’s mind about the third wife. She also conspires with Songlian’s maid, using her, in effect, as a spy in the enemy’s camp.
Third wife, Meishan (He Caifei), is a former opera singer. She is still young and pretty and, until Songlian’s arrival, received the most frequent attention from the master. She is therefore the wife most overtly resentful of Songlian, refusing to greet Songlian when she first arrives, fearing that the master may prefer a new and younger wife. She is also the most blatantly manipulative, flaunting her talent as a singer and feigning ailments in order to garner the master’s attention. She takes aggressive actions aimed at winning back her previously dominant position in the family’s pecking order.
The head of the household, Master Chen Zuoqian (Ma Jingwu), is almost an invisible character in the story. He is seldom seen and when he is, he is most often in the shadows or obscured behind the veils that hang here and there. We see his face clearly only once during the film. Nevertheless, the operation of the household is entirely dominated by his will, his rules and his needs. His power is so absolute that he needn’t even be present for its effect to be felt by all. He does not participate in the household intrigues and appears to be largely obvious to them. The impersonal nature of his control allows viewers to draw easy parallels to institutionalized varieties of patriarchal dominance, such as repressive government regulations. Despite his firm grip on power, he is sometimes easily manipulated, such as when third wife feigns illness to draw him away from her competitors, just as government agencies are sometimes readily manipulated by those bent on fraud or some other advantage.
One other character who plays a significant role in the story is Yan’er (Kong Lin), the servant girl who is assigned to be Songlian’s maid. Songlian is in conflict with her from the very moment of her arrival. Yan’er, already a favorite of the master, had hoped to be elevated to mistress status herself and is intensely resentful of Songlian. For her part, Songlian treats Yan’er as an inferior and demands that she stay in her place as a mere servant. Yan’er secretly conspires with second wife against Songlian but is ultimately destroyed by her own ambitions when she is caught with red lanterns in her own apartment, an outright violation of rules.
Although we sympathize with Songlian in this story, she is far from faultless. She suffers from an excess of willful defiance and almost childlike petulance. Worst of all, she believes herself to be cleverer than her competitors, probably because of her limited experience with higher education, when, in fact, she is out of her depth when it comes to the household intrigues. She has not learned to disguise her stratagems and is easily out-maneuvered, especially by second wife. She decries the system into which she has been thrust but is no angel herself. She is rash and haughty at times and subject to petty jealousy.
The intrigues are powered by a variety of twists along the way. Songlian discovers an ominous locked shed on the rooftop where, according to whispered accounts, a previous wife, unable to adapt, had died. Songlian fakes a pregnancy but is exposed by her duplicitous maid. She is so thoroughly out-foxed by one of her rivals that she inadvertently contributes to the destruction of her one potential ally. I’ll leave the details of these developments for readers to discover on their own – for those who have yet to see this film.
Themes: One obvious theme in this film (as well as several others directed by Zhang Yimou) is subjugation of women. This film cries out loudly against the subjugation of women and, more broadly, the subjugation of individuality by age-old repression traditions maintained by patriarchy. Although the specific variety of subjugation presented in Raise the Red Lantern may be largely an issue of the past, subjugation continues today in many other ways and in many places. The beauty of the lush apartments of the wives of the Chen household remind us that subjugation is not limited, by any means, to squalid environments. It is interesting, I think, that each of the three older wives, in this story, reserve their strongest jealousy and hatred for the wife most immediately below them, she being the one that first posed the threat of displacement from an earlier position of preeminence. We see amply illustrated, here, the hazards of polygamy. Jealousy must inevitably erupt when two or more potential sex partners coexist in competition under the same roof.
The Chen household is, in some respects, presented as a world unto itself, isolated and cutoff from the outside world. Little news or social contact filters in. This could be seen as a parable for the isolation and rigidity of Chinese society and the government that maintains it. In many respects, modern Chinese society is a closed, dictatorial social system governed by archaic rules and customs. When violent wrong-doing occurs in support of that system (i.e., Tiannamen Square), it can be denied and locked away in much the same manner that the ultimate abuse of women in the Chen household could be hidden away in the rooftop shed.
So, Raise the Red Lantern can certainly be interpreted as a condemnation of institutions that repress human liberties, yet there is another deeper theme pertaining to human nature itself. What some will find most disturbing about Raise the Red Lantern is the ease with which the victimized individuals have been manipulated into active participation in their own subjugation. It begins when Songlian chooses to trade her matrimonial freedom based on a short-term need to gain independence from her stepmother. It continues when she unwittingly buys into the game of duplicity and intrigue, allowing jealousies and anger to fester. The wives make enemies of one another, unable to understand that they are all victims together. Human life is full of examples of co-victims being turned against one another.
Production Values: Zhang Yimou may be without equal is his commitment to producing films of extraordinary visual beauty. His best films are more sumptuous in appearance than those produced anywhere else in the world. He creates visual metaphors that drive home aspects of his story. Here, for example, most of the film occurs within the confines of the Chen household, giving us a sense of Songlian’s confinement. There are recurrent long shots down the central courtyard and explorations of the huge house that seem to imply that the boundaries of this limited world are out of sight and out of reach – like an imagined edge of the world. There must be an outside world, but it can never be encountered by these economic captives. The composition of each frame adds meaning as well. We see Songlian dead center in most scenes, reminding us that she is at the center of the story and that what we are watching his her life and world.
Zhang Yimou’s exceptional approach to color has been evident in many of his films. His films from this period used the last of the three-strip Technicolor laboratories, permitting a vividness in the reds, oranges, and yellows that is breathtaking and not available in modern American films. It is a feast for the eyes. In the exterior shots, the colorful costumes and lanterns are set against dull grays of the walls of the Chen residence, giving them further highlight. The architecture is highly detailed as are the fabrics and interior furnishings. The lush visual beauty of the film stands in stark contrast to the cruelty of the life it depicts, heightening the emotional power.
Gong Li is China’s foremost film star and her list of film accomplishments is very impressive for such a young actress. Raise the Red Lantern is arguably the best of her several collaborations with Zhang Yimou.
Zhang Yimou, who was born in 1951, is a respected member of the group of Chinese filmmakers known as the Fifth Generation. He directed such successes as Red Sorghum (1987) and Ju Dou (1989). His cinematographic technique ranks him among the top filmmakers in the world, but he has yet to fully master good narrative technique. Raise the Red Lantern is a simple story but suffers most from a rather weak ending. I can’t be too specific about that weakness without giving too much away. I’ll simply say that I thought that the plot twist involving second and third wives was creative but that Songlian’s endpoint was not credible to me. It felt like an empty afterthought.
Bottom-Line:Raise the Red Lantern received a nomination for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars and tied for the Silver Lion award at the Venice Film Festival. It’s a beautifully filmed story with solid themes and gripping human melodrama with only occasional narrative weaknesses. I have this film on VHS. I’ve read that the DVD version from China is of very poor quality (though I can’t verify that from personal experience), so you might want to avoid it in that format.
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You might want to check out these other excellent films from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan:
The old master of a powerful family in 1920's China supports three wives. Each has her own house within the closed world of the family compound where ...More at Family Video
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