Red Lantern (1991)

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Movie
German title Red lantern
Original title Dà hóng dēnglóng gāogāo guà
Country of production PRC , Hong Kong , Republic of China
original language Chinese
Publishing year 1991
length 125 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Zhang Yimou
script Ni Zhen , based on a template by Su Tong
production Chiu Fu-Sheng
music Zhao Jiping
camera Zhao Fei
cut You yuan
occupation

The film Red Lantern ( Chinese  大紅 燈籠 高 高掛  /  大红 灯笼 高 高挂 , Pinyin Dà hóng dēnglóng gāogāo guà ) is based on the story A crowd of women and concubines by the writer Su Tong . It is about a young woman in China in the 1920s who marries into a wealthy and traditional family. Their conflicts with the intrigues and rituals of this environment lead to tragedy .

action

Prologue : 19-year-old Songlian is forced to give up her studies because of the family's financial hardships after her father's death. At the behest of her stepmother, she marries into the household of a rich, elderly man, Master Chen, as a concubine.

Summer : Songlian is welcomed as the fourth mistress, but the servant Yan'er meets her with hostility on arrival and is put in her place by her. In the evening the lanterns are lit in the fourth courtyard. The householder goes to Songlian to spend the wedding night with her. While Chen is with the shy and reluctant bride, they are disturbed by the singing of a woman and the servants conveying the ailment to the third mistress, whereupon the householder rushes to her. The lanterns are then extinguished in the fourth courtyard and lit in the third, and Songlian, who is then disappointed, remains behind.

The next day she gets to know the other women and learns that the woman determines the choice of food for the next day, when the host spends the night, which the vegetarian does not like. The first mistress and chief wife, Yuru, is her husband's age and has a grown son. She is respected and represents the landlord in absence, but the lanterns are no longer lit in the first courtyard. Zhuoyun, the second mistress, tries to win the trust of her "fourth sister" through kindness and warns her about the third mistress, who can be denied. Yan'er, the servant she met on arrival, is assigned to her.

At the next meal, beautiful Meishan, the third mistress and former famous opera singer, appears haughty. On her tenth day in the house, Songlian learns the humiliating ritual of lighting the lantern, in which all mistresses and servants in the courtyard have to wait for the announcement with which of the women, the householder, intends to spend the night. The residential wing is then decorated with red lanterns. The feet of the chosen person are massaged. When, like the previous nights, the choice fell on the fourth courtyard, Meishan had the landlord called to him that night because of alleged illness. Songlian threatens future refusal, so he stays with her. However, they are disturbed by Meishan's singing. The hostility to her servant deepens when she catches this having a fight with the landlord. In response to the jealous scene that followed, Chen had the lanterns in the fourth courtyard extinguished. After the red lanterns have been burning in the third courtyard for a few nights, Songlian walks in her solitude on the roofs of the house. While the aversion to the beautiful Meishan increases steadily, Zhuoyun calls her for a conversation, gives her silk for a dress and seeks friendship by creating a common enemy image, which Songlian gladly accepts. Meishan invites them to common Mahjong one, however Songlian noticed this familiarity between this and the doctor of the house, suggesting an affair.

Autumn : Songlian meets Feipun, Yuru's son, whom she meets playing the flute. An attraction between the two is indicated. Remembered by him of her father's flute - his only legacy for her - she looks for it in her things, but it has disappeared. She suspects Yan'er, who storms into their chamber and ransacks them. While doing so, she does not find her instrument, but the room is decorated with red lanterns, which are forbidden for the servants. Also a kind of voodoo doll with Songlian's name on it and studded with needles. Since Yan'er cannot write, Songlian forces her to tell her the name of the mistress who helped her make the doll. To her horror, it is her alleged friend, the second sister Zhuoyun. When she complains to the landlord about the disappearance of the flute, the latter admits to having burned it out of jealousy, assuming that she had received it from a fellow student. She reacts horrified and another scene occurs because he does not understand the ideal value of the flute for her either. Thereupon she again shows him out of her room.

Zhuoyun, unaware that Songlian heard about her intrigues, asks her for a modern haircut to please the master and give him a son. Songlian cuts his ear, which means that the lanterns are burning in the second courtyard from now on and Zhuoyun rejoices with malice in front of Songlian. Meishan tells her a little later about the time when they were both pregnant at the same time. At that time, Zhuoyun tried to force her rival to abort with a pregnancy-interrupting drug, but it failed. While Meishan gave birth to a desired son, the rival had a daughter. Meishan also warns Songlian of sinking into insignificance if, as the fourth mistress, she does not give life to a son in the foreseeable future. Songlian pretends to be pregnant in order to get the full attention of the host and thus increase the likelihood of an actual pregnancy.

Winter : From now on, Songlian receives a red headband as a token of appreciation and is allowed to be groomed. Happy Chen from now on keeps the lanterns burning in the fourth courtyard. One day, Yan'er notices blood in Songlian's underwear and calls Zhuoyun. This leads the home owner to have the pregnancy examined and the deception is exposed. Angry, the landlord drops his care, accuses her of breaking the family rules and, as a punishment, has the lanterns in the fourth courtyard veiled, which comes close to being rejected. Then he leaves.

Songlian suspects who has betrayed her and shows the assembled mistresses the forbidden lanterns of the servant Yan'er. Songlian demands that the servant be punished. As the representative of the absent householder, Yuru imposes a punishment according to tradition and lets the servant kneel in front of the burning lanterns or their ashes until she collapses with a fever. The householder returning home has her taken to the hospital and insists on good medicine so that he does not get into talk about bad treatment of his servants. Songlian watches the scene full of guilt and a little later learns of the servant's death.

Meishan tries to comfort Songlian in her loneliness, whereupon Songlian suggests that she knows about the affair with the doctor. Startled, Meishan warns her of betrayal, but at the same time indicates that she wants to see the doctor. It's Songlian's 20th birthday and she's getting drunk with growing frustration. Feipun comes to her, gives her a present, which she rejects because he must have received it from another woman. She accuses him of hypocrisy and finally expels him from their rooms.

After the second mistress wants to bring the drunk to bed, the latter slips out that the third sister is with the doctor. The next day, the sober girl stands in the courtyard and witnesses how the servants and Zhuoyun drag a gagged and deranged Meishan into the house under heavy resistance. The second sister thanks Songlian for the betrayal of adultery, who no longer remembers what she said the previous evening.

Some time later Songlian is startled by the noise on the roof and sees the male servants carrying away the tied but struggling Meishan, behind which a man is walking with a rope. She watches the group as they walk to the attic, which is said to be haunted because some of them have already hanged themselves there. A short time later the men come back alone, she goes to the chamber and discovers Meishan, who is obviously hanged, which causes her to break out in screams of horror. She accuses the house of murder. The return home owner asks her what she saw. She repeats her allegation that they are all murderers. Her husband angrily explains that she is insane because she supposedly did not see anything.

In the orphaned third courtyard, all the lanterns burn in the evening and the records ring with Meishan's singing, which causes the servants to panic because they assume that the murdered mistress has returned as a ghost. In fact, it is Songlian who, out of mourning, has removed the cover from the veiled lanterns and puts on records with Meishan's singing.

Next summer : Another wedding is celebrated, the fifth mistress comes into the house. The scenes from the beginning of the film of a bride having her feet massaged are repeated. When she sees the traumatized figure in school uniform with a loose hairstyle, who is walking up and down between the burning lanterns, she asks about this. She gets the answer that this is the former fourth mistress who is confused in the head.

interpretation

The film paints the picture of a traditional Confucian -influenced Chinese family in which the head of the family rules over his main wife, concubines, children and servants. That the imperial Qing dynasty has come to an end and the era of the Republic of China has dawned can only be recognized in the film by the fact that the protagonist Songlian is a student who walks to her husband's property. The traditional reception committee to pick them up misses them. Modern times meet the past when she finally arrives in her school clothes in the spacious residential complex that shields the outside world from the inside world. The conditions Songlian encounters there are determined by the intrigue and competition of women. The hierarchical Confucian family model, which is actually supposed to enable order and harmony, favors discord and conflict in the household of the Chen family, the source of which is the recurring selection of the woman with whom the head of the family spends the night. Although Songlian must have come into contact with ideas of emancipation and self-determination as a student , she does not even begin to live these ideas, but is instantly drawn into the conflict-ridden social dynamics. But she also fails in the traditional role of a concubine. She cannot bind her husband to her permanently. Unintentionally she causes the death of her servant Yan'er and the second concubine Meishan and goes mad. It fails, so to speak, in the conflict between the modern and the past. One can understand the film as a critical examination of the Confucian family model. Since in the Confucian understanding a harmonious family is the basis of a harmonious society, one can understand the film as a criticism of a Confucian orderly society, as which the People's Republic of China sees itself. The hierarchical order and lack of perspectives characterize a claustrophobic life situation, which in the end creates resignation (1st mistress), submission (2nd mistress), betrayal and death (3rd mistress) and madness (4th mistress). The vague representation of the head of the family can be interpreted as the anonymity of power, the shielding presence as an analogy to other closed systems. The daily lighting of the lanterns can be understood as a parable of the ritual act in an authoritarian society. This is not a custom in the context shown, but is used as a stylistic device. Whether this critical point of view was decisive for the temporary ban on the film or the open theming of sexuality in the film, or even both, is difficult to say, as the Chinese censorship authorities can make very different individual decisions.

style

The well-known director Zhang Yimou tells the drama in strict, visually convincing images. The property with its courtyards and roofs is regularly staged in quiet settings. The actual master of the house, on the other hand, appears only indistinctly from a distance or filmed through curtains. The women and the protagonist, on the other hand, drive the plot forward and are presented in a multi-faceted manner.

The fact that women have no prospects of social contact, friendship and the acquisition of knowledge is implemented by the director by restricting himself to the supervision and internal view of the property. The view cannot go beyond the system any more than it can wander over the walls. The subtle coloring of the interior underlines the priority of the red light - with all its implications. Objects that refer to an “outside” (e.g. from the lived past of the 3rd mistress) also refer to the unreachable of a self-determined existence to the same extent.

Reviews

“A small masterpiece, a precise, realistic and basically bitterly melodramatic film about the marriage ritual in China in the 1920s, brilliantly staged by Zhang Yimou - one of the stars of the Chinese cinema scene. In the main role, Yimou's partner at the time, Gong Li, shines once again, who had previously played in Red Cornfield . "

- Prism Online

“A dark drama developed in fascinating images of concentrated severity. Signals of passion, sensual strength and individual dignity captured in looks and gestures become moving carriers of hope for a possible life beyond bondage and oppression. "

- Lexicon of international film

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for the red lantern . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , June 2013 (PDF; test number: 139 394 V).
  2. ^ Ideology in Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern
  3. ↑ Red lantern. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed July 22, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used