How To Raise The Red Lantern

Ilari Pass

ENGL 272: World Cinema

Jeske

June 9, 2014

Red: Good and Bad Luck?of a Different Sort

Based on the novel Wives and Concubines by Su Tong, Raise the Red Lantern is a 1991 movie that challenges how the Chinese society views oppression and treatment of women in old tradition of Confucian. The movie To Live demonstrates a frank examination of mid-twentieth century China covering four decades, moving from the 1940s when the old class system flourished through the fierce hardships of the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s to the transition period of the 1970s. Zhang Yimou, a ?Fifth Generation? filmmaker, directed both of these films. To my astonishment, actress Gong Li, Zhang?s wife, starred in both films as well. By contrasting the use of color and camera angles in the two films, we can see differences in how these lives are portrayed: Raise the Red Lantern represents a sense of dominance and betrayal, whereas To Live demonstrates passion for life and redemption.

In Raise the Red Lantern, Zhang is

obviously attracted to the theme of the rich man and the young wife, but he focuses especially on the system of concubinage. The high camera angles in the film gives the effect that the women are indeed powerless, trapped, and do not amount to anything. The Chen family consists of the master, who is the patriarch, and his four wives: Songlian (Gong Li), who is educated and the youngest, Meishan (He Caifei), a former opera singer, Zhouyun (Cao Cuifeng), the second mistress, and Yuru (Jin Shuyuan), the oldest and the wisest. Ruled by elaborate rituals, the wives spend their days waiting to be chosen for the night by their mutual husband, whose ways of signaling his choice include a special foot massage to the woman he likes best. ?If you can manage to have a foot massage every day, you?ll soon be running this household,? Zhuoyun tells the new arrival, Songlian. The master is nowhere to be seen, except in hints and shadows. Even though you do not see the master, the high camera angle is a patriarchal offstage presence; almost like a puppeteer pulling the strings that is set on the rooftops of its domain as the four wives and the household staff scheme among and against themselves.

In addition to camera angles, the color red symbolizes power over the wives. The red lanterns are the centerpiece of the film: their red color is seductive or repellent with a strong sense of sexuality, danger, violence, and blood whereas the other colors in the film are softly muted out. On a few occasions, Meishan wears the color red when she is singing and when she is having an affair with the family doctor demonstrating power and seductiveness within herself by defying her master. Songlian has a similar radiance in the beginning of the movie even when she accepts her own fate of becoming a concubine. All the wives are seemingly radiant, but with a dull expression that belies their radiance. The color red is suppose to bring good luck and fortune, but beneath the beauty is the cruel reality of this life, just as beneath the comfort of the rich man?s house is the sin of slavery. The only wife that admitted as much is Yuru when she says, ?Such sins, such sins.?

The 1994 movie To Live is a powerful story that follows a family whose lives are bound up in the political twists and turns that took place during this dynamic time. In contrast with Raise the Red Lantern, the husband, Fugui (You Ge) values his wife, Jiazhen (Gong Li), her opinions, and family life. The medium two-shot camera angles give a personal and intimate appeal in scenes between Fugui and Jiazhen, their children, and their friends within the neighboring community. They raise a family and survive, managing ?to live.? As their personal fortunes move from wealthy landownership to peasantry, Fugui loses everything due to his addiction to gambling. His luck has changed for the better at this point. Family meant everything to Fugui, even when he is pressed into both the nationalist and communist?s armies saying, ?There is nothing like family.? The camera angles show this importance of family life to Fugui.

In Raise the Red Lantern, red represents bad luck, but in To Live it represents good luck and fortune.

Fugui is a puppeteer of a different sort than the master. The rich color of red in his puppets during his shadow puppet troupe for family and friends in the community suggests good luck and fortune. Over the years they suffered extreme hardships?losing both of their children: one by an accident and the other after giving birth to their grandson, Mantou. Not only that Jiazhen mattered, but also the colors in the film gave her a true glowing and radiant beauty effect, even when she suffered loss and despair as she aged throughout the film. In other words, in Raise the Red Lantern, the color red is used for dominance and sexual desire, whereas in To Live, red is used to bring in good luck despite the politics of Communism. As Jiazhen?s radiance grew more with time at old age, the color red in the Communist world began to fade?almost

mute.

In Raise the Red Lantern, the color red and the high camera angles suggests an inescapable sense of oppression, whereas in To Live it suggests a rich and vibrant passion for life, hope, redemption and forgiveness in an unforgiving world of Communism while using medium two-shot angles to tune in what really matters. Even through the good, the bad, and the ugly, in the end, Jiazhen?s wish came to true??to live a nice and quiet life.? Overall, Zhang uses these techniques to demonstrate old traditions and politics and how these people live in the Chinese culture.

Works Cited

Giannetti, Louis. Understanding Movies. 12th ed. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.:

Prentice-Hall, 2010. Print.

Raise the Red Lantern. Dir. Zhang Yimou. With Gong Li. Razor Digital

Entertainment, 2006. DVD.

To Live. Dir. Zhang Yimou. With Gong Li. http://youtu.be/ZB7HYhUpDz8
2014. Web.