The film opens with the narrator's telling us that a father has just arranged the marriage of his daughter -- the egregiously beautiful Gong Li -- to a wine merchant who is rich but leprous. We see the bride-to-be carried in a bright red sedan by half a dozen men, followed by another small band playing Chinese music on tinny instruments. It's not a Hollywood movie. The procession doesn't move solemnly across the arid landscape as it might if, say, Gene Tierney or Susan Hayward were being carried. The men holding the sedan have heavy round wooden dowels across their shoulders and are ridiculing the young lady, bouncing her up and down, singing riotously about how she will soon catch leprosy. None of this causes Gong Li any pleasure, and she discretely tucks a pair of scissors into her blouse.After the wedding and a few odd interruptions, somebody apparently kills the leprous winery owner and Gong Li is now the owner. She begins with a clean slate. From now on, she won't be called "boss" but by her real name. The men will burn everything the leper touched and will sprinkle sorghum wine all around the plantation because the wine is known to cure all evil. At this point it was beginning to sound like an endorsement of communism but the dozen workers react with such unencumbered joy, screaming drunkenly and splashing the wine all over the place, that visions of "Viridiana" came to mind. What are they going to do next, somehow desecrate Confucius? Gong Li was apparently raped on her way to her wedding by the narrator's grandfather. After she takes command of the winery, she is kidnapped by bandits and apparently abused again before being ransomed. Meanwhile, the narrator's grandfather, penniless, has been wandering the countryside. He's not too smart, gets belligerent in a roadside beef house run by the bandits.Cut. Forty-eight minutes into the story, the video clip ends with no parts to follow. And so we leave grandpa, surrounded by murdering bandits who want to cut out his tongue for non-payment of a bill at a Chinese restaurant. He's reckless, lawless, and stupid but I hope he keeps his tongue in the future in this colorful story -- such as it is.

It's rare to find Yimou's films on terrestrial/free to air digital television. 'Raise The Red Lantern' is a fascinating film as well as the mythic 'Ju Dou' so I was keen to watch 'Red Sorghum' for the first time.It is a bawdy, earthy film yet also mysterious & complex as represented by characters such as the boy's Grandfather & the steward, Luohan as well as the bandit Sanpao. The sedan carriers sing a song mocking the bride yet cease when they hear her sobbing. A bandit attacks them but is fatally distracted by the young woman's beauty.It's reflected in the songs which accompany the film, from the bawdy & slightly grotesque (the bridal litter scene in the beginning) to songs sung in praise of a wine spirit, an older China of pagan rituals. It is about a peasant community with its own folklore (the disappearance of Big Head Li) & codes (Sanpao & the Grandfather, the ransom).'Red Sorghum' is about a land & the people rooted to its soil, their rituals & traditions, & following the Japanese occupation, how these survive as the Grandfather is literally covered in earth, & China re-born.The film is narrated (voice over) by the boy's adult self. It has a mythic kind of tone & mood. Ancestors occupy a special role in Chinese life & are venerated. Continuity is reflected by the boy's Grandmother, who asks the villagers to call her by her family nickname 'Little Nine'. Later, the story fast-forwards nine years to the narrator as a young boy.The story begins with a poor young woman forced into an arranged marriage though this strand is of secondary importance (in contrast to 'Raise The Red Lantern') as the story is about how she overcomes her dismal prospects (her father barters her for a mule, a comment perhaps on the treatment of women/of less value than a mule) & assumes a prominent role in the peasant community. The sorghum becomes a symbol of China, of its people. The fields can be dangerous & illicit, a place where bandits hide, but also a source of life & prosperity, the red wine that resembles blood & which is sacrificed to the wine spirit. Later, the steward & others make an even greater sacrifice for their land.The major turning point of the film is akin to the abrupt change of tone in 'The Deer-hunter' (structure), domestic scenes giving way to the brutal Japanese occupation. The scenes are unsentimental & all the more shocking for this. The sorghum fields are trampled down & crushed, like the Chinese people. The slightly comical butchers who worked for the bandit Sanpao are forced into a horrific choice, the scenes where the older butcher gently washes Sanpao & his poor young assistant driven mad by what he has been forced to do linger in your mind. Images reinforce points, here the Japanese are the real butchers.The film doesn't just depict the Chinese as passive, but proud & defiant. 'Little Nine' urges the villagers to avenge the Japanese's victims leading to the violent explosive denouement.It is a beautifully filmed piece of work, the red hue which imbues the cinematography to the indigo blue of the night skies with the moon high above. The final image of the sorghum swaying again in the red sunlight is a symbol of China itself & of its people, whatever history may throw at them, be it a decadent master to amoral occupiers & maybe even a one party state.

Well, I admit that I am a fan of Zhang Yimou's movies, but this film seems to me inept, ill-paced, tedious, poorly edited, and somewhat propagandizing in overall feel. Yes, some of the imagery and cinematography is stunning, yes, Li Gong is fabulous, but altogether, it doesn't seem to add up to much. There are long stretches of film with literally no movement at all, no narration, no sound (usually the last thing about which I complain!), and nothing happening. The lack of continuity or explanation of events makes for a disjointed story. It isn't helped by the extremely inept English subtitles which accompany the copy I viewed from my local library. I hope someone will release a version with a decent set of subtitles. Honestly, most of the international students I know, including those from China, could do a better job of translating the subtitles.All in all, this film seems promising but extremely amateurish, a quality which seems to endear it to those buffs of "art films".

Credit goes to Yimou for stripping this epic 2 novel series down to this spare and gorgeous little hour and a half. For all the recent fantastic forays into Chinese fantasy, this story (which is allegedly true) shown as it is, is as close to a fairy tale as it gets, at least until the very end. Every shot is a painting. For some reason this film is still near-impossible to find on DVD. I truly hope it is not being suppressed for anti-Japanese sentiment expressed in it. That would be a terrible shame. This film was released shortly before Tienanmenn (sp) and it has a boldness and frank humor rarely seen in Chinese film since.