Raise the Red Lantern

Raise the Red Lantern (1991) is set in China in the 1920s. Songlian, nineteen, has to leave university and enters a wealthy man's household as his fourth wife. The house runs on a system: whichever wife the master will spend the night with is announced by a red lantern hung outside her courtyard. The woman whose lantern is lit has privileges that day. The subject is not the man but the competition between the women. His face is almost never seen clearly; what holds the system up is not his presence but the women policing each other. Zhang Yimou directed. Gong Li plays Songlian, in one of the most cited of their collaborations. The visual structure is built on courtyards. The camera is almost always symmetrical and elevated; the house reads less as a home than as a floor plan. The women never go outside. It could not be released in China; the authorities banned it for a period. Abroad it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and won the Silver Lion at Venice. It runs 125 minutes. Good for: formally immaculate filmmaking, narratives about power and obedience, and Gong Li. Less good for: the pace is slow and the plot is deliberately narrow. The violence is indirect but its consequences are heavy. The film grants no character a way out and the hopelessness does not let up.