The Banquet (China)Obviously manufactured to get to play with the big boys.
The Gist
Set during the ancient China period, the emperor had just died. His highness’ wife, Zhang Ziyi (or the Americans call her Ziyi Zhang) mourns his death while her brother-in-law, Ge You takes over the throne. At the same time, he orders his men to kill his son-in-law, the dashingly handsome Daniel Wu for the reason of preventing him from ascending to the emperor’s throne. Wu is the supposed emperor and for some complicated reasons, he is also Ziyi’s former lover, then stepson and now an orphaned prince. Suspecting that the previous emperor was killed by Ge You, Wu comes back for further investigation and revenge. Zhou Xun is cast to complete the love triangle that every costume epic must possess. Sounds complicated? It is complicated.
What Do I Think?
First, there was a Crouching Tiger that got everyone excited. To preserve the excitement, a Hero was sent to further celebrate the hype. The colorful celebration proceeded with the House of Flying Daggers with stylishly polished martial arts that pushed the genre to one of its peak standards in Hong Kong cinema. Next, one long dethroned director joins the bandwagon but his Promise fell flatter than it seemed to have supposed to deliver. Except the last one, all have one person in common: Zhang Ziyi/Ziyi Zhang. A billion people in China and they have one single representative. Cool? Cool.
Director Feng Xiao Gang who brought us excellent productions like Big Shot’s Funeral and A World Without Thieves now tries to get the world’s attention by attempting a costume epic. Surprise, surprise, Ziyi is once again selected to play the lead actress role BUT this time she was the second choice as Gong Li was busy with some other better projects in her hands.
Feng incorporates a handful of western elements into this film; for starters, the story is loosely based on Hamlet. The opening scene, you get some Chinese people wearing white masks with body movements similar to French mimes. The music, taking cue from Middle Kingdom, utilizes non-Chinese instruments. Thank goodness none of the dialogue was in English.
It is very obvious that the plot is deliberately complicated to create “high” aesthetic values. Fortunately, the story slowly unfolds its complications towards the end to create a certain closure and end the audiences’ unending head-scratching.
The production values deserve praise from every corner. There are no worries about the lack of eye-candy. The sets are authentically designed to fit the premise of the plot and perhaps that could be one thing you could take home with you, if not for the storyline.
Feng collaborates with Yuen Woo Ping to craft poetry in kung-fu. The effort is commendable but I feel that the audience will hardly be awestruck by the artfulness of it as they are more immersed with figuring out the plot of the story. There were no groundbreaking stunts, other than the violent death execution of one of the rebellious general.
I cannot stop imagining Gong Li’s face pasted on Zhang’s whenever she appears onscreen. I feel that Gong Li would have been more suitable for the role. As always, Zhang’s performance met all expectations pretty well (pun intended). Heck, she was born to play these roles. The ever-reliable Ge You shows us the royal side of him as the power-hungry emperor. As a frequent collaborator with Feng, they both know what to expect from each other and thus, a solid performance was ensured. Daniel Wu, cast to guarantee its classification as a Hong Kong film, appears in the film with limited expressions of sadness, anger, disgust and hatred. The next time they want to use an axe to cut vegetables, I hope they start to think carefully.
Rating: 6/10
The pre publicity of the film is well generated to create international awareness and hype was a very smart move. It would have been better if the film itself was genuinely as smart.
Notes:The only HK actor in the film was Daniel Wu (martial arts choreographed by Yuen Woo Ping’s team) and this was Hong Kong’s official selection for the Academy Awards?
Last updated: 2009-08-11 21:55:13 by joekhor
