Is That Tang-y Enough?

The Banquet and Curse of the Golden Flower. Both are big budget Tang period movies. Both have a conniving Empress at its core. Both feature dysfunctional royal families. Both showcase that ancient court opulence goes hand in hand with the spilling of human blood. Both feature coups and deceits. Sex and incest. And it's all fine and dandy. Regardless of all the similarities (I really shouldn't have watched both back to back), there are some salient details that differentiates both movies. In general, Banquet is not so in your face, but the storyline is slower. In Curse, the story is easier to follow but the plot is really thin.

Let's look at Banquet first-- Prince Wu Luan's interest in the arts really borders on the absurd. He and his "The Song of Yue" troop. Even in death, they perform their mime-marionnette act to perfection. Zhang Zi Yi's performance here as Empress Wan is surprisingly tolerable, not so annoying as in Crouching Tiger. We get a perverted Emperor who loves his desires of the flesh (don't we all). Some of Zhang Ziyi's booty esposed. Some boob groping. But I think it's most probably a body double. Lotsa blood. At the end of it all, I don't know why the Emperor took his own life and who took the Empresses'... A hanging ending.

In Curse, the family falls apart like nice, tall block of Jenga pieces and in the process either get each other killed or get themselves condemned. The Emperor is another nut job and the Empress is stuck on kamikaze mode. I still can't get the image of Gong Li's overly-gold eye shadow outta my head. And her recalcitrant nature drinking the medicine, gargling and wiping her mouth with embroidered silk (I didn't notice that this scene keeps repating until a fellow blogger pointed it out) is quite a keeper. Throw in 2 shots of incest and loads of restrained bosoms (the flattened man tou brigade) and you get the story going into self-destruct mode. Zhang Yi Mou even threw in an LOTR battle scene with the same sweeping camera angle. By the end of it all, a sea of blood turned a sea of flowers, but it's still a cerita tergantung...

So am I to blame if this post also ends tergantung?

Comments

savante said…
I think Chinese melodramas love hanging endings.
Little Prince said…
soooo the bodoh this movie... and it's all the same room... chiew to the max...
Ryan said…
'So am I to blame if this post also ends tergantung?'

Darnnit! You've been corrupted by talented Chinese film makers!
Sam said…
Errr... I was expecting an ending to your thoughts on the subject. =P
drownedglass said…
Here's another difference - one is blatantly black, the other's pukingly psychedelic.

I love the way Gong Li throws cup, washwater and cloth all out (every two hours in movie time), but it was kinda funny seeing her appear as Hatsumomo in certain scenes :-P

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