Kurosawa meets Busby Berkeley

By Edward Copeland
Zhang Yimou assembles a world in Curse of the Golden Flower of stunning beauty, beauty nearly equal to his leading actress Gong Li, reunited with director for the first time in years. Still, as great as the movie works as an opulent spectacle, there remains something dramatically and emotionally inert about it that pales in comparison to the director's early exquisite films.

Set during the Tang dynasty of 10th-century China, Curse of the Golden Flower may be the most successful of Zhang's late-career switch from powerful small-scale dramas to martial-arts extravaganzas.

Hero left me cold, though I liked House of Flying Daggers for the most part, but Curse worked better for me because the fighting grows out of the story instead of seeming as if it was the only reason for the film to be made in the first place. Gong, who came to the world's attention in Zhang's early films, reunites with the director for the first time since 1995's Shanghai Triad.

She plays the wife of a powerful emperor (Chow Yun Fat), who for some reason is slowly poisoning his wife to drive her mad and eventually kill her. One of the problems with Curse is that even once the film is over, I still had no clear sense of why the emperor felt it necessary to off his wife in the first place, but no matter, what I did like about the film was the amazing imagery that Zhang creates on the screen.

The entire opening sequence seems more like an elaborate musical number as it sweeps and scans the emperor's palace and its assorted denizens with vivid colors, amazing costumes and even a good beat. Once the fighting ensues, it doesn't seem as if Zhang has just seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon too many times. The feudal-era fighting seems more earth-bound and the parts that do, particularly dark-clad warriors who literally slide into the scene on wires, are different enough to provoke admiration as opposed to a feeling of "I've seen this sort of thing enough."

Gong is great as usual, though this part doesn't give her the chance to flex her acting muscles the way her previous work with Zhang did, specifically Raise the Red Lantern and To Live.

In a way, Chow Yun Fat fares better because it's fun to see the man usually cast as the hero play a bit of a villain for a change and to let others do most of the fighting for him.

Still, when I think about the movie, I keep coming back to the remarkable production values. Yee Chung Man's wondrous costumes got a well-deserved Oscar nomination, but the production design by Huo Tingxiao deserved a nod as well.

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