Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) - Review by Lana Mendez

Curse of the Golden Flower is a 2006 Chinese film from the director Zhang Yimou.[1] The film’s budget was $45 million dollars (US), making it the most expensive Chinese film at the time of its release. The film grossed over $78 million dollars worldwide, also making it the third-highest grossing foreign language film of 2006. The film was nominated for one Oscar for “Best Foreign Language Film”, and received a Saturn Award for “Best Costume Design” for designer Chung-Man Yee. The lead actors are Chow Yun-Fat as Emperor Ping, and Gong Li as Empress Phoenix. The film is loosely based off a 1934 play Thunderstorm, by Chinese twentieth-century playwright Cao Yu. During the film’s production, the working title of the film "The Whole City is Clothed in Golden Armor" became a reference to the sandstorms that occurred throughout Beijing in spring of 2006, and has such became a term for sandstorms among the cities residents[2].

The title of the film in Mandarin Chinese (The Entire City is Full of Golden Plates) is taken from a poem written by Huang Chao (885-884CE), who led a rebellion in the late ninth century against the Tang Dynasty (618-907CE). The poem is titled “Chrysanthemum”, and the final phrase of the poem is, “the whole city will be clothed in golden armour”. In the published screenplay, the movie takes place during the Later Shu (934-965CE) of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (937-979CE)(cite). In the English version of the film however, it states that the story takes place in the year 928CE, during the Later Tang Dynasty (923-937CE). The imperial family that the story is centered around is fictitious, but the Empress does show some similarities to Empress Wu Zetian (624-705CE) of the Zhou Dynasty. Both women exhibit strong ambition and cunning in the pursuit of political power, and exhibit questionable relations with their sons. The film does go to great lengths to present its characters in authentic Tang Dynasty apparel, however, as the headdress of Emperor Ping is said to be a realistic Tang Dynasty replica. Many of the characters also wear up to 40 kilos of costumes, often comprising of at 4-6 layers of clothing. The film is more presents the historical period as a backdrop for the cinematic plot, as the imperial family and city are not of historical fact. Although, despite the pastiche of historical and ahistorical elements, the film achieves the result of creating an entertaining piece of cinema that conveys a complex and intriguing plot of melodramatic characters, despite its array of historical neglect and inaccuracies.

[1] Yimou, Zhang, director. 2006. Curse of the Golden Flower. Sony Pictures Classics. [2] Chinese Pod, “国产大片,”December 2006, accessed October 31, 2020, https://chinesepod.com/lessons/%E5%9B%BD%E4%BA%A7%E5%A4%A7%E7%89%87.