With The Curse of the Golden Flower, Zhang Yimou has once again dived into his seemingly newfound love of martial arts epics and stories about the Chinese monarchy. However, while Hero and House of the Flying Daggers are more about rebellions against the crown, The Curse of the Golden Flower with its Ran-esque storytelling, address the theme of conflict within the monarch. Zhang is never one to subject you to long, bloated epics or unfocused pacing, but in any case, the same problems I held with House of Flying Daggers, abrupt endings and the outrageous climaxes, I still hold with this film. The first hour of the film is excellent, the slow build-up of the first 30 minutes of the film is complimented by the masked woman walking into the room. The sequences afterwards logically connects the relationship of the king toward the queen as well backstory about how he ascended the throne. In addition to setting up a web of intrigue that proceeded to follow, we are more aware of the characters after that sequence. The two elder sons, the servant girl and the mother were all potentially important characters.
However, the gigantic climax felt way too overstrenous of a screenwriting process. The servant girl and the mother, whether or not they were related hardly mattered to the plot, and that the servant girl rushed out of the palace at the discovery of her brother is an overdone dramatic sequence, especially since it is by coincidence that the monarch seems to have relations with both yet the mother and the servant girl are related. They seemed to be completely different characters at the beginning, and it is a bit unbelievable that the person that the elder son is having an affair with is the daughter of the "masked woman." And their characters being removed so fast is a questionable move and only hurts the plot development, they could have been essential characters at the end instead of just plot devices. The younger son murdering the elder son is completely meaningless, and served more to create needless drama. The younger son clearly held no vendetta toward the elder son previously and him killing his brother just like that when the film is completely focused on the other story seems like way too contrived of a climax and completely unnecessary. It felt like The Departed, which the characters just drop dead one by one.
However, the look of the film is quite exquisite, Gong Li's jewerly plastered robe and Chow's golden armor compliments the look of the period extraordinarily, the opening scene of the horseback warriors riding into the palace sets up a Kurosawaian mood, and the scenes over the cliffs are particularly imaginative.
I would say that it is inferior to Riding Alone For Thousands of Miles and Hero, but superior to House of Flying Daggers and is currently my fourth favorite film of the year. It was about where I had intended it to be, actually a bit better than what I had originally thought. 8/10
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