Raise the Red Lantern (1992)
cast: Gong Li, Ha Caifei, Cao Cuifeng, Jin Shuyuan, and Cui Zhihgang
director: Zhang Yimou

Reality maybe the scariest thing we know of or will ever have to deal with in life. In the early 1920's in China, reality took on the face of sexual hardships and practical slavery for females. The introduction to Zhang Yimou's "Raise the Red Lantern" is a close-up shot of Songlian (Li). Off camera, we can hear the voice of her mother. Songlian begins to cry she is a college drop out that is ready to except her role in life as a concubine or a numbered wife to a master. There isn't much hope for her as a role model in a society that mistreats females. Her mother casually objects to Songlian's accusations against herself, but we know mother knows it to be true. She's been there as well.

The mansion Songlian is sent to is a vast work of traditional stone construction and rich tapestry. The master (who is always seen from a distance, heard, but never totally exposed) is literally a multi-millionaire. Songlian is now wife number four and is given her own quarters, similar to the three wives that precede her. The rule of the house is that a red lantern is lit and raised outside the quarters of the wife the master will sleep with that night.

Unbeknownst to Songlian there is much competition between the other wives for their master's attention. For Songlian adjustment is difficult, but taken in by the second wife (devilishly portrayed by Cao Cuifeng) who appears as a friend and tries to help her new sister in the house. The first wife (Jin Shuyuan) is more of a figurehead to the house. Like the mansion, she has aged her beauty and status forgotten and only remembered in the times of need.

The third wife (He Caifei) steps in as Songlian's opposition. The third wife still has some beauty left and her talent for opera singing hasn't yet faded. She directly views Songlian as ultimate competition. The first two wives are post-menopausal and are worth next to nothing in bed. The third wife will soon join them, so the competition runs in a harsh tempo.

Amidst all of this lies a small red shack on the roof of the mansion, just above Songlian's quarters. The shack is locked up and is a mysterious and forbidden realm for the house's new occupant. Occasionally a cryptic piece of dialogue about a non-conform wife is muttered about the shack, but the details left bare.

Director Zhang Yimou never has lost his art of storytelling. His films often convey a message about China's social status or government position. As his previous film, "Jou Dou" Zhang explores Confucian society in the earlier part of the century mainly focusing on the way females were looked upon socially and their sometimes-brutal treatment inflicted by husbands and masters. A few years later, Zhang and Li would face political turmoil when Yimou's film "To Live" explored the effects of "Mao's Great Leap Forward" and "The Cultural Revolution." The government promptly banned the film and silenced Zhang and Li from speaking about it.

Here, Zhang returns to the similar story-like script that directly deals with the brutality of women at the hands of their male dominators. Like "Jou Dou" Li is a victim of a society and the philosophical understanding that women were dogs and only above their own female offspring and servants. "Raise the Red Lantern" seems to deal mostly with the psychological torture women of that period must have endured at the fate of a male dominated society.

When women cannot compete with males, they are forced to compete with themselves even if it means turning against one another. The film proves that in a bone-chilling climax where not everyone is what they seem and the use for the red shack becomes completely apparent.

What is most apparent about "Raise the Red Lantern" is that Zhang Yimou has created another world that looks so beautiful on the outside, a world that is fabricated its ideals and creations being of great ugliness.