« Barbara by Christian Petzold | Home | Glückwunsch Regina Ziegler und Team! »
Red Sorghum – Golden Bear at the 1988 Berlinale
By Dorothea Holloway | October 18, 2012
Mo Yan, author of the novel Red Sorghum, will be awarded this year’s Nobel Price for Literature. In 1988 Zhang Yimou won the Golden Bear for his screen adaption of Mo Yan’s work. To honor the Nobel Price Commitee’s decision here my review of Zhang Yimous award-winning film:
The images in Red Sorghum overwhelm. The eyes are stunned and wrenched by imagery that fairly burst the borders of the frame. A strange and foreign world is unveiled.
All the more impressive, this is a debut film – although its director, Zhang Yimou, was already known as the cameraman for Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth (1984) and The Big Parade (1985), both of which have made the rounds of international festivals to introduce the film world to a still relatively unknown land of myth and magic.
This Chinese entry at the 38th Berlinale, winner of the Golden Bear, impresses, first of all, for its color-composed narrative style – consequent from beginning to end, applied without compromise, as rare in its demands upon the viewing audience as it is fascinating in its conceptual breadth. When the red sorghum field sways from one side of the frame to the other, the effect of being drawn along with the images is breathtaking. Yet this stylistic factor does not impose any extra weight upon the thematic content. Rather, it underscores the film’s dramatic depth as a film-ballad, a ballad about the passion of a woman in China of the troublesome 1920s and 1930s.
Red Sorghum opens with waves of the cornfield in the wind. We find ourselves in the midst of a red ocean of shoulder-high grain, and through it a bride is being borne in a red hand-carriage on the shoulders of bearers in her entourage. As is customary for a wedding, she is clothed completely in red, down to a red veil covering her face. Her father has sold her to an aged gin-distiller. To make things worse, her journey is anything but a pleasure: the constant to-and-fro movement of the bearers is more than enough to make her ill. The entourage makes fun of the whole affair: the accompanying musicians sing and dance, as do the bearers themselves as they tote the carriage. Suddenly, everything grounds to a halt, and the merrymaking stops – inside, the weeping of the suffering bride can be heard.
Then a bandit emerges from the sorghum field: he intends to kidnap the bride. But Yu, one of the bearers and as strong as a bear, beats off the attacker – and kills him. The entourage continues on its way. Upon arriving at the gin-distiller’s manor – house, the bride is left to sleep in the courtyard, rather than the manor itself – for her future husband has leprosy. Here again the images are striking: a night bathed in blue, crowned by a full moon.
After three days, according to custom, the bride returns home to the house of her father. This time, however, she’s riding on the back of a donkey.
Again, the way leads through the sorghum field – and, again, she is set upon by attackers. A masked abductor carries her off into the red field. It is Yu, the carriage-bearer who saved her honor at the outset of the trip. He has prepared a bridal-chamber on a bed of red cornstalks. They make love, and a son is begotten.
Sorghum supplies the film’s central motif. It is planted in China for the grain it bears. Eaten, the cereal nourishes like rice; brewed, the red liquid jolts the senses like potent gin. The images are now those of blood and death, of violence – unexpected, genuine, unusual, overpowering, without respite. The gin is brewed in jugs that can contain a full-grown man, and we see how it is made by barechested men bathed in sweat. The ritual is experienced in documentary detail, although the scene is not blown out of proportion for the sake of effect. Each worker receives his share of the brew for drinking, for singing, even for praying. The gin flows – like blood from an open wound.
Now the Japanese invaders have arrived. The son of the couple is 9-years-old. The villagers are forced by Japanese soldiers to trample down the field of red grain with their bare feet; a roadway has to be constructed. As a lesson to resisters, the foreman of the gin-mill is skinned alive as an example to terrorize the villagers into submission. He has refused to cooperate with the Japanese. Later, the Chinese take their revenge: the road is mined – and when the Japanese return the fire, an explosion leaves behind a gaping crater. Nearly everyone dies in the blood-bath, save for the boy and his father. The sun sets – a flaming red ball.
More than just a film set against the fiery background of a field of red grain, Red Sorghum weaves the myth and magic in its rich imagery of a “Deutscher Wald” in its deeply profound sense. This is a place of dark secrets. The heads of grain waving in the wind impose the same artistic density as the mysterious shadows of a forest. The sorghum field can shelter bandits and hint of ghosts. It can provide a fitting veil for love-making and serve as a bridal-chamber. It can cradle life and be reduced to a wasteland of death and destruction.
Red Sorghum – a signal, too, of the advent of contemporary Chinese cinema on the world film scene.
Topics: Film Reviews, International Reports | Comments Off on Red Sorghum – Golden Bear at the 1988 Berlinale
Comments are closed.