In pre-unified China, the King of Qin sends his concubine to a rival kingdom to produce an assassin for a political plot, but as the king's cruelty mounts she finds her loyalty faltering.
Not far from Shanghai, in a country town stands the palatial home of the Pang family. Old Master Pang is an addict who brings up his beautiful daughter Ruyi on opium smoke. Her older ... See full summary »
A violin prodigy and his father travel to Beijing, where the father seeks the means to his son's success while the son struggles to accept the path laid before him.
To save the only child of the Zhao Family, whose entire clan was massacred at the hands of a nefarious minister, a doctor sacrifices his own son; after the Zhao child grows up, the doctor becomes intent on seeking his vengeance.
'Yellow Earth' focuses on the story of a communist soldier who is sent to the countryside to collect folk songs for the Communist Revolution. There he stays with a peasant family and learns... See full summary »
A blind man's master told him that after he has broken 1000 strings on his Banjo, he can open the Banjo to get a script for his eyes. After 60 years he broke the 1000th string...
A provincial boy related to a Shanghai crime family is recruited by his uncle into cosmopolitan Shanghai in the 1930s to be a servant to a ganglord's mistress.
The story begins on a bus, when white-collar worker Ye refuses to give up her seat to a senior citizen. Her defiance is videotaped by a journalist intern and played during a news show. The ... See full summary »
A pregnant peasant woman seeks redress from the Chinese bureaucracy after the village chief kicks her husband in the groin in this comedy of justice. As she is frustrated by each level of ... See full summary »
In the 3rd Century BC, Ying Zheng, heir to the Kingdom of Qin, seeks to dominate the remaining six Chinese kingdoms. Ying's strategy is to seem invincible. Ying sends his concubine Zhao to the Han Kingdom as a spy, to enlist an assassin he can conquer. Zhao persuades Jing Ke, but falls in love.Written by
<ssrich@cityu.edu.hk>
The task of reproducing the costumes for the production was undertaken by the renowned designer, Mo Xiaomin, whose work is synonymous with the term 'costume design as art'. Mo Xiaomin spent two and a half years visiting historical ruins, collecting vast amounts of information and reading over 100 specialized texts before officially accepting Chen Kaige's offer to create the costumes for the movie. During the early planning stages, there were continuous consultations with the director and thousands of preliminary sketches made before Mo decided on his final 400 designs. The film's costumes are the culmination of four years of continuous labor and the pinnacle of Mo Xiaomin's celebrated twenty year career as a designer. See more »
Alternate Versions
Kaige Chen's preferred cut ran 168 minutes. Following pressure from his producers and the U.S. distributor, he prepared a very different 162-minute cut that subsequently became the standard version of the film. The 168-minute cut was only released in Japan and has a more linear narrative, as opposed to the five-chapter structure used in the shorter version. See more »
I will admit my ignorance of this film's existence, until I saw it advertised on a cable outlet. I was very impressed with the novelistic structure of the film. The film, which is in a language I do not understand, shone with intelligence and nuance for me. I think this speaks to the film's quality. It was visually stunning. The acting was visually entrancing. The Chinese theater traditions of movement, used to enhance the delivery of dialogue, is so compelling after watching Western film, where actors traditionally focus more heavily on the dialogue. The action in this film comes right at you, without a lot of explosions to get your attention. It is human action that is so affective here. The added advantage that the film taught me history about one of the world's greatest tourist attractions, the funereal clay army of China's First Qin Emporer, was very impressive. It seemed to give the film an international relevance beyond the film's great ethical themes. This is a film I can comfortably recommend to a wide variety of friends and acquaintances.
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I will admit my ignorance of this film's existence, until I saw it advertised on a cable outlet. I was very impressed with the novelistic structure of the film. The film, which is in a language I do not understand, shone with intelligence and nuance for me. I think this speaks to the film's quality. It was visually stunning. The acting was visually entrancing. The Chinese theater traditions of movement, used to enhance the delivery of dialogue, is so compelling after watching Western film, where actors traditionally focus more heavily on the dialogue. The action in this film comes right at you, without a lot of explosions to get your attention. It is human action that is so affective here. The added advantage that the film taught me history about one of the world's greatest tourist attractions, the funereal clay army of China's First Qin Emporer, was very impressive. It seemed to give the film an international relevance beyond the film's great ethical themes. This is a film I can comfortably recommend to a wide variety of friends and acquaintances.