Red Sorghum
Place on List:
III. Period: 1960 - 2009
2.
Primary Texts: Film
Zhang
Yimou. Red
Sorghum.
(1987)
Key Terms (tags): China, film, period
Supporting References:
“When Red Sorghum was released
in 1988, it attained immediate fame and success, both in its Chinese
homeland and around the world. To the outside world, the film
promised a rare view into a China just emerging from the protective
isolationism that surrounded the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and
1970s. To moviegoers inside the People's Republic, Red Sorghum
marked a new kind of cinema and the beginning of a new generation of
filmmakers.
“Zhang Yimou, who directed Red
Sorghum, was born in 1950, in the thick of the revolution. Like
many others born into privileged families at that time, his higher
education was factory labor, and his cultural entertainment consisted
of government sponsored films and theatrical productions, which were
usually simplistic, moralistic, and patriotic. Though Zhang was
fascinated by film, and managed to buy his first camera while working
in factories, he would be forever influenced by his disgust with the
overtly propagandistic films of his youth. Later he would recall,
"When we were in film school, we swore to each other we would
never make films like that."
“By 1982, the Beijing Film Academy,
which had been closed during the Cultural Revolution, was reopened,
and Zhang was part of the first post-Mao graduating class. It was the
fifth class to ever graduate the Academy, giving Zhang and his
classmates their sobriquet, the "fifth generation" of
Chinese filmmakers. The fifth generation were not establishment
filmmakers, but they gained international notice because of the moral
complexity and gritty realism of their films.
“Adapted from a novel by Mo Yan, Red
Sorghum was one of the first of this new breed of Chinese film.
Set mostly in the 1920s, the film is told in flashbacks from the
point of view of a man recalling his grandparents' lives as they try,
and finally fail, to protect their village winery from Japanese
invaders. It is a lyrical film, which seems at times almost like an
epic or folk tale, as it challenges repressive traditions such as the
subjugation of women. Zhang, who was trained to be a cinematographer,
has a sharp eye for the visual elements of his film and the color
red—of the sorghum crop, the wine, the Chinese bridal dress, and
blood—permeates the film. The red, red setting sun that ends the
film might represent the flag of the Japanese conquerors, or simply
the inevitable shortness of every human life.
“Red Sorghum is a film of
contradictions. Containing darkly comic elements, it is also a
violent film; the villagers treat each other violently and the men
treat women violently, but their violence pales compared to their
treatment at the hands of the Japanese army. The reception of the
film was itself contradictory. Director Zhang received ten thousand
letters accusing him of treason when Red Sorghum was released,
yet the movie houses showing the film in China were packed. A new
generation of Chinese audiences were hungry for a film that expressed
the moral ambiguity and the sense of chafing under authority that
they themselves were beginning to feel.
“After the release of Red Sorghum,
Chinese leader Den Xiaoping increased the repression of Chinese
intellectuals. Where Red Sorghum had been an accepted film
that brought international awards home to China, Zhang's next films
(Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern, for example) were
banned in his own country, though they were popular around the world.
In 1994, Zhang was forbidden to make films for five years.
“Red Sorghum was a
breakthrough to a new kind of filmmaking in China. It was also a
bridge between China and the world outside it, from which it had been
largely cut off during the years of the Cultural Revolution. Later,
as the government cracked down, and the fifth generation filmmakers
outgrew their youthful rebelliousness, Chinese film stepped back
under a more comfortable umbrella of popular propaganda. But, thanks
to films like Red Sorghum, the world outside China would never
be shut out in the same way again.”
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This source focuses
on the director and not on the information sheet object text.
“Born in the thick of revolution, prolific Chinese filmmaker Zhang
Yimou learned early about cataclysmic social change and deep personal
secrets. The son of an officer of the Kuomintang, Zhang was born a
suspicious character to his new government. Like many other children
of privileged families swept up in the Cultural Revolution, his
higher education was factory labor, and his entertainment consisted
of government sponsored films and theatrical productions, usually
simplistic, moralistic, and patriotic. Though Zhang was fascinated by
film, and managed to buy his first camera while working in a textile
factory, he would be forever influenced by his disgust with the
overtly propagandistic films of his youth. Later he would recall,
"When we were in film school, we swore to each other we would
never make films like that."
By 1982, the Beijing Film Academy,
which had been closed during the Cultural Revolution, was reopened,
and Zhang was part of the first post-Mao graduating class. It was the
fifth class to ever graduate the Academy, giving Zhang and his
classmates their sobriquet, the "fifth generation" of
Chinese filmmakers. The fifth generation were not establishment
filmmakers, but they gained international notice because of the moral
complexity and gritty realism of their films.
“Though he was designated a
cinematographer, Zhang soon began directing his own films, which
would be characterized by their stark humanity and stunning visual
imagery. Through 1995, they would also be characterized by the
powerful performances of Gong Li, one of China's most famous actors
and Zhang's longtime lover.
“Zhang's first film was Red
Sorghum, a lyrical folk tale of a film that presented viewers
with a strong, even ruthless, heroine to challenge the traditional
Chinese subjugation of women. Mostly set in the 1920s in the harsh
countryside of rural China, Red Sorghum was at the forefront
of a new breed of Chinese film that was beginning to express moral
ambiguity and chafing under authority.
“Zhang's next film, Codename
Cougar, was fairly noncontroversial, a political action/thriller
about an airplane hijacking, but he soon returned to the themes of
societal repression and rebellion that would cause many of his films
to be banned by the Chinese government. In Ju Dou, Zhang
revisits his rural roots for a story of brutality and starvation,
both literal and figurative, about the passion between a poor mill
worker and the abused wife of the mill owner. Ju Dou was the
first of Zhang's films to be banned.
“Zhang's next films, Raise the Red
Lantern, The Story of Qiu Ju, and To Live, were all banned
by the government of his homeland, and were all visually remarkable
films of the passion and drama in simple country life and the
struggle of the common people (often women) against a brutal power
system. Raise the Red Lantern illustrates the position of
concubines as property, The Story of Qiu Ju follows a young
woman's struggle to gain justice from an unfeeling bureaucracy, and
To Life documents the turbulent times of the Cultural
Revolution. Audiences around the world flocked to peek through this
keyhole into the emerging Chinese sensibility.
“Zhang stayed on safer ground in his
next film. Shanghai Triad is a lush gangster movie set in
1930s Shanghai that was widely admired, even by the Chinese
government. Shanghai Triad was selected for the honor of
opening the New York Film Festival, but politics prevailed. Even
though Chinese authorities approved of Zhang's film, they did not
approve of another documentary about China slated for the festival,
and Zhang was virtually forbidden to attend his film's triumph.
“Following his split with Gong Li,
Zhang's films became less star-driven. Not One Less is the
story of a substitute teacher in a remote village who becomes
obsessed with preventing one of her students from dropping out of
school. Zhang filmed the movie on location in a tiny rural village,
using villagers as his cast. The result here, and in his subsequent
films such as The Road Home, is a direct film that expresses,
without grandiosity, the endless contradictions that comprise human
life.
“While many of Zhang's films offer a
bleak picture of Chinese life, but they are never hopeless. Rather
they reveal a sensual zest for life that survives the harshest
conditions, and an underlying humor that sweetens despair. Audiences
in China were hungry for the triumphant spirit of rebellion that
pervades Zhang's films, and audiences around the world soon found
that China was not so far removed from them after all.”
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