Hong Kong (Tomson HK Films Production)
Released in the US by Miramax
Chinese director Chen Kaige’s “Farewell My Concubine” is a visually impressive and emotionally complex historical epic.
Grade: B+ (**** out of *****)
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The film, which co-won the Cannes Festival top prize, the Palme d’Or (with The Piano), is fascinating to watch, despite some shortcomings in the storytelling and running time of two hours and 36 minutes.
The historical canvas begins and ends in 1977, with two aging performers of the Peking Opera in an empty theatre.
In between these brief segments there is the tumultuous story of China, a country that has gone through numerous social and political upheavals.
The narrative is guided by a fascinating idea, how half-a-century politics affect the artistry of two friends who meet as children.
Dieyi (Leslie Cheung), the more interesting character of the two, is introduced as the sensitive boy of a prostitute, a tough woman who insists that he goes to the Peking Opera School. Slender and delicate, Dieyi is soon specializing in playing female roles.
Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) is exactly the opposite: big, strong, and masculine. From the very beginning, the bond between the two has sexual overtones. Maturing to be a gay man, Dieyi doesn’t conceal his physical attraction to Xiaolou and his jealousy when the latter “betrays” him and gets married. Both men are committed–and go out of their way–to practice their art.
It may be interesting to watch “Farewell My Concubine” back to back with Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 Oscar-winning epic, The Last Emperor, since they cover the same historical era. In some respects, The Last Emperor benefited from similar strength and also suffered from the same problems. Both movies are visually stunning and both boast such huge scope that they end up being facile and sketchy, rapidly jumping from one historical era to the next.
However, unlike The Last Emperor, in Farewell My Concubine, we get a better sense of the director’s historical sensibility, particularly in the sequences depicting the Japanese invasion of China in WWII and the tragic effects of Mao’s 1966 Cultural Revolution on an ancient yet magnificent institution like the Peking Opera.
The most perceptive and detailed observations concern the school, where the boys are physically tortured by their demanding masters and where they vow for a lifelong bond.
The brutality of punishment that Chinese children go through during their training to become performers is quite shocking. In fact, the two men had been so intensely indoctrinated that, years later, when they revisit the school, they are willing to take more abuse from their aging master.
However, in the film’s later chapters, which are brief, the attraction of Dieyi for Xiaolou, their differing approaches to their art, and their personalities are glossed over, and the film rushes to establish the impact of external, ever-changing politics on the status of the Peking Opera and its performers.
The production’s technical aspects and the recreation of the stylized operas are wonderful, and they almost make up for the fact that, at the end of the film, the two characters still remain rather enigmatic.
Oscar Nominations: 2
Foreign Language Film
Cinematography: Gu Cahngwei
Oscar Context
In 1993, the winner of the Foreign Language Film Oscar was the Spanish entry, “Belle Epoque.
The Cinematography Award went to ace Polish lenser Janusz Kaminski for Spielberg’s Holocaust drama, Schindler’s List, which swept most of the Oscars.
Credits:
Directed by Chen Kaige
Screenplay by Lu Wei and Lilian Lee, based on Farewell My Concubine by Lilian Lee rewritten from Qiuhaitang by Qin Shouou
Produced by Hsu Feng
Cinematography Gu Changwei
Edited by Pei Xiaonan
Music by Zhao Jiping
Production company: Beijing Film Studio
Distributed by Miramax Films (US)
Release date: January 1, 1993 (Hong Kong); October 15, 1993 (US)
Running time: 171 minutes; 157 minutes (US only)
Language Mandarin
Box office $5,216,888 (US)