Curse of the Golden Flower : Is it worth to watch as a visual experience?

I don't know anything about the plot of this movie, but the pictures I've seen are stunning. Is it visually beautiful all the way through, or at least enough so that you may want to watch is as a piece of photographic art?

Definitely yes. It's up there with HERO and HOFD in terms of visual beauty.

Thanks!

Absolutely, Yes!
This is one of the most visually stunning movies I have ever seen. Further, the visuals are amazing in virtually every scene, not just in a few set pieces. The color, the costumes,the sets, the lighting, the framing and composition are just amazing.
The only movie I can think of that approaches it in visual splendor is Tarsem's The Fall and The Fall, as good as it is, has nobody with the amazing screen presence of Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li.
My son bought this movie because it was on sale for 5$ and we'd seen and liked Hero. We took it home and watched it and we were so blown away we watched it over again every day for a week.
Also, it's not just a visual feast. The acting is outstanding and the plot is excellent. A truly great movie.

Discounting the visuals (which are stunning) but the story is compelling as well, even though there were times I wanted to step in for the character and just perform the deed. :p

It's one of the most over bloated films I've ever seen. And in that regard stupid and silly. I wouldn't waste my money ever again, and am sorry I saw it.

I thought it was stunning visually, just amazing.

Oh yeah? The firework's display at San Francisco has more "depth" and is a hell of a lot more impressive visually than this thing.

The plot is that of modern China's most famous play, so nothing wrong there either.

But while the original play was about a Chinese family in the 1920's (I think it was), director Zhang Yimou moved it to the imperial family of the Later Tang dynasty. I'm guessing in order to enable the impressing visuals that are his trademark as a director.

The playwright's intention was to show that by the early 20:th century, the Confucian ideal of the nuclear family had become a lie and a fascade, and that while the family tries to keep up a tranquil apperance to outsiders it is actually deeply dysfunctional.

A story that might feel familiar to a Western viewer too.

Visually absolutely! And the story and intriges are compelling too.

No.

As to your question, yes. But in terms of substance, no.

Yes and no. Much of "Curse of the Golden Flower" is indoors with the visuals coming from the building and clothing. The visual experience from "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" is outdoor desert scenes and "House of Flying Daggers" is outdoor forest scenes. All three are visual but "Curse" is different as it's set indoors.

I am sorry I wasted an afternoon watching this dreck. Yes it was visually stunning but the story line left me exhausted and unfulfilled.
breastfeeding is the biological norm

Decent movie. Great visuals. 7/10

As you can see only a minority of posters didn't like the visuals. Checking the extras of the DVD you can see the set was gigantic and not just virtual images. CGI goes along. The film is a reflection of male feudalism dominating society in the past. Inset decoration plus impressive costumes create this Chinese opera. Now, even to appreciate western opera you can't do it easily if all your life you have merely listened hip hop or funk, can you?
Beneath the flamboyant and glamour of the real Tang dynasty, within the family everything was rotten. Light was important to enhance gold and jade as a faade and rotten inside. Huo Tingxiao, the production designer, explained the Chinese art GLASS pillars of all imaginable colors were ILLUMINATED from the inside. The gold costumes were used because the rulers used gold to enhance the sense of lavishness.

There's a thin gap between skepticism and cynicism

It's definitely worth it to watch for the visual experience. I found this film to be visually stunning and captivating. The settings are beautiful from beginning to end.








Namu Myoho Renge Kyo

Definitely worth watching for the visual experience of Gong Li as the glamorous and luscious, yet tragic, Empress Phoenix.

You'd be entertained just staring at Gong Li for that matter, excuse my bluntness.
But I'd say yes. It's worth watching for a whole lot of reasons.
Just loses it's strength due to special effects which I just didn't buy.

It the biggest piece of People's Republic of China trash cinema to ever get captured on celluloid.

Even the Chinese I saw it with at the Kabuki in San Francisco's Japan Center laughed at the ridiculousness of the thing.

Okay

That's not a very useful comment.

It's about as useful as you're going to get here.

Look, if "your own people" don't like your film, and you made it specifically for that audience, then what does that say about your film making skill?

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Look, if "your own people" don't like your film, and you made it specifically for that audience, then what does that say about your film making skill?

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Doesn't have to mean anything.
Might just be controversial.
Or just a bit niche.
Who knows.
"What a lot of people think" never really is important.

I do think Cruse of the Golden Flower has pretty big problems and even without those it wouldn't exactly have mainstream appeal or whatever.

Saying this is about the worst movie you've seen is just unreasonable or you've been very lucky with the movies you HAVE seen.

No, it's not controversial. It's junk. It's got the blessing of the PRC and was designed as a big epic-action piece to get people interested in Chinese history and culture.

It failed on every account.

I don't have a clue what its intentions were.
And frankly I don't care.
There's plenty about it that I think is very well done.

Oh yeah? Like what? The open shots of breasts for the credits?

You're not going to try to only slightly change your mind about this are you?
If so please tell because I'll just give up on you.

No, I'm genuinely curious. Me, personally, I think you're just some rep from the PRC who wants to know why FREE America didn't like a piece of communist trash film making.

Everything from the clevege shots in the begining to the silver and gold armored armies charging at the end, and everything in between, was implausible and stupid, no matter how much false praise you heap on it.

And then to have martial arts sequences in the middle of what was promised to be a dramatic epic? Like I said, I sat in a theatre as the one white guy among a mass of Chinese movie goers, and there were chuckles at the ridiculous moments in this thing.

Me, I just thought it was amateur hour as far as film making goes. I didn't even find it humorously bad, just bad. But everyone else ridiculed it.

Whether that changes your mind or not, hell, I don't know, nor do I really care. But some foreign government rep trying to troll the boards wondering why a stinker was disliked?

I mean, come on.

I don't quite understand why people wouldn't understand why it's disliked since it has plenty of problems and even the things that I think are good about it certainly won't click with everyone. You can take it as a plain style over substance thing and on that level you're going to have different opinions about it. There's not a lot of movies I feel so mixed about as this one.

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I just thought it was amateur hour as far as film making goes.

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That however is something I just can not get behind. There clearly is an idea to how it was made. This is clearly not just some guy pointing the camera at things happening.

Now I think some background is required both on how this movie came to be and how I experienced it (Because I watched these movies in th chronological order of release).
At the start there's probably Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Which was already a movie more succesful with western audiences (made by a director who already had been working in "the west" so it sort of makes sense). It's also a movie I kinda love.
After having seen that movie where do you go?
A couple of years later director Zhang Yimou (also director of curse of the golden flower) picked up a bit in a similar trend with "Hero".
I think it needs pointing out that Zhang Yimou isn't just the-guy-who-made-the-wuxia-movies-who-isn't-Ang-Lee. Zhang Yimou had been pretty popular on western movie festivals where in China his movies were barely seen because they may been a bit too politically critical. I think a lot of those are well made but not exactly easy movies.
So, Hero. I like Hero, but it's incredibly overstyled. There's a couple of VERY clunky special effects but unlike Curse of the Golden Flower it does actually have convincing giant armies (not done with a computer so). The structure of a story has a character telling a story and another character questioning it so you'll be getting different versions of the same story (all with their own primary colour (did I say the style is a bit much already?)) which is pretty interesting but does take away from the emotional engagement of it all.
Next up he made house of flying daggers. Which is a lot more toned down in style and I'd say just looks pretty gorgeous. Story is a whole lot more straight forward, which makes it easier to latch on to. So I'd say it's generally a better watch, maybe a bit less interesting to discuss. Still don't think it's as good as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Then we get to the main "course" of it all: Curse of the Golden Flower.
I just feel at this point Zhang Yimou didn't really want to make a similar movie as earlier but was somehow pushed to. Because I think it works well as a kind of court drama. I don't know how much of the movie is saved for me simply by Gong Li being a great actress here. What I like in the movie is basically the empress knowing mentally breaking and try to keep up appearances (while creating a plan) in this ridiculously "made" environment in which all the colours and shiny stuff are just overwhelming. So you'll have this overstylized "fake" environment with humanity trying to break through.
The problem then is that when *beep* actually hits the fan and there's fights, the fights look really fake as well, which is sort of ironic and I think really breaks the movie. My "favourite" instance of violence in the entire movie is just the emperor murdering his own youngest son. Because it's just someone getting brutally beaten up. Even though that happens off screen it feels a lot more real. If the action were more like Ran (1985) to just take a very high level example with all the shiny armour getting covered in blood and mud I might be calling the movie pretty masterful.

If you were wondering I like the movie for unintended reasons: yeah I've considered that myself as well. But I don't think so.

I guess I liked the flying ninjas. (You may know them as the black roping sickle fighters. Although some things they were able to do really didn't make much sense.)
They reminded me of the bat ninjas of the Usagi Yojimbo comic books.