I've had partial reviews of a bunch of films written and sitting on my notes page for months, a stronghold from which they taunt me. Mockingly. So I'm going to work through that backlog over the coming week(s), when I have a chance to flesh out the old notes and scores into something more worth reading.
Good thing there are DVDs now, eh? Back in the 1970s it would have been pointless to post movie reviews on a blog months after the films were gone from theaters... oh wait.
Curse of the Golden Flower. Malaya and me endured this one last year, in theaters. We were growing tired of wuxia by then, after having our
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon appreciation blunted by the stupid stories and overly decorated visuals of
Hero and
House of Flying Daggers, but we thought perhaps
Curse of the Golden Flower would restore our faith in the genre. Tragically, all did not go according to plan.
The Curse of the Golden Flower, 2006
Script/Story: 3
Acting/Casting: 5
Action: 6
Eye Candy: 7
Fun Factor: 2
Replayability: 3
Overall: 3
This was the worst of the big budget, gorgeous scenery, Imperial China wuxia films yet. After yawning our way through this snoozer, Malaya and me spent the drive home debating whether or not the steadily decreasing quality of these films is something we can blame on
Crouching Tiger. That was the only one of them that was actually any good, in the sense of being a complete film with a plot. It was sprawling and undisciplined, and I hated the extended irrelevancy of the middle section, featuring the spoiled princess and the Mongolian hordesman in the trackless desert, but most of the principle characters were interesting and well-rounded, there were discernible good guys and bad guys, the scenery was lushly gorgeous, and the fight scenes were great. Every wuxia film since then has upped the ante with scenery and set decoration and vast hordes of extras in matching, color-coordinated costumes, but the characters have become steadily less interesting and more clichéd, the plots have become one-dimensional fairy tales, and the fight scenes have grown bloated and top heavy with too many extras and magical powers.
Worst of all, the films have become overt propaganda pieces to the glory of the ruling Chinese emperor, showing that apparently the communist rulers of China see themselves as the direct spiritual descendants of that godlike level of authority. The plot of
Hero was almost interesting, since it was about an assassin trying to infiltrate the king's court to kill him before his despoiling armies could finish unifying (by massacre) all of China. In the end the assassin decided not to kill the ing since it was better for the king to triumph in his wars and unify the land so it could be great... 1200 years later. Talk about foresight!
Curse picks up on this theme, but does so in a fashion that's even more depressing and frankly, vile. It's like bad Shakespeare. The king is a vicious, cruel brute, he's slowing poisoning his wife, and his sons both hate him and want to overthrow him, if only to save the queen's life. So they try and try, and fail in the end since the king is smarter and presumably is favored by the gods to rule. So one son dies, one is humbled and beaten, and the queen has to continue drinking the poisonous medicine until she loses her mind as penance for having some original thoughts and opposing her husband's will. The end. Seriously, that's the plot. There are a few irrelevant side plots with loyal court physicians being murdered for trying to help the queen, assassins and long lost enemies returning as friends, etc. But all those details are irrelevant to the central theme.
The design is gorgeous, but painfully so. They could have called it
Curse of the Golden Wallpaper since about 2/3 of the movie takes place in obscenely overdecorated and overlit hallways, most of them running as straight, long and nowhere as the passages on the Starship Enterprise. I gave it a 7 on eye candy mostly for effort. If this is the first wuxia movie you ever see you'll be dazzled and amazed and wonder why I didn't give it a 10. If you've seen several others, you'll wonder why I didn't give it a 4, since we've seen every gaudily-colored set, masses of troops in bright matching armor, vast hordes of black-pajamed ninjas, etc, etc, in other, better films. They're visually attractive, but everything is so overdone in this picture it's like being dumped into one of those outdoor wild flower gardens, where there are just acres and acres of brilliant blossoms. Pretty, but sensory overload. One flower is heartbreaking. Five is touching. Fifty is impressive. Five thousand is eye-aching. This film, and wuxia in general, is fifty thousand flowers, all perfect arranged for color, and all changing to a new color every 5 minutes.
This literally happens in
Curse; events draw as close to a grand finale as they ever do when one of the rebellious sons leads an army against the emperor during a chrysanthemum festival. There are stylized, elaborate scenes of thousands of warriors in matching costumes charging through the old time Broadway Musical-looking palace courtyard sets, and being met by equal numbers of contrasting color costumed soldiers, while thousands more servants scuttle out with tens of thousands of pots of flowers with which they literally carpet the vast courtyard. Battle ensues, with massive life loss and bloodshed, until only the one prince is left, fighting like, 5000 soldiers. He kills maybe 100 of them, all with slow motion, wide-sweeping, artistic slashes of his spear. Corpses bounce through the flowers, blood splatters like (as) paint, dramatic music plays, etc. Finally the prince is beaten down, but not killed, and as he's carried up to the royal patio where the gloating king waits, thousands more servants run out and instantly remove the bodies, and replace all of the broken and bloodied pots of flowers with fresh new ones.
It's all very symbolic and artistic and weird, but I found it silly and utterly uninvolving. It was all so clearly choreographed for the movie, and so artificial and unreal that it completely took me out of the story. YMMV, and I hope it does, since I think I'm done with wuxia now. They've just gotten too unreal, like Broadway with swords, and the entire movies are now performances, like some sort of Chinese Bollywood. Which is fine, if you want to be visually-delighted and don't mind that you're watching an odd sort of theatrical performance, rather than a motion picture that attempts to engage and involve you with a believable story, sympathetic characters, realistic events, etc.
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