R (for violence)- 1hr. 54min.
I have a new movie to write about! I have always loved kung-fu movies, but this one has more drama and less action. Most of the action doesn’t happen until the last third of the movie.
This has been recorded as the most expensive movie ever to come out of Beijing, with a $45 million production budget! Nothing is wasted when you see the elaborate sets, wardrobe and Chinese stars that are littered throughout this film. For those movie buffs like me, we always want to know how true a story is. This masterful retelling of a 1930’s chinese play is just that, a rewritten play.
There is no historical significance to the story, as everything is a mixed up mess when attempting to look at the different items throughout the movie. First of all, the movie’s displayed time-frame is set as the end of the Tang Dynasty in 928 but the screenplay is said to be set during Later Shu of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. The major error of this is that the architecture of the Forbidden City’s inner chambers is apparently of the Ming Dynasty. The time errors continue with the armor worn by the soldiers, which is said to have been rarely worn in that era with the exception of on ceremony of visiting dignitaries, not for combat. The empress’ nail extensions (another wardrobe error) were not worn until 600 years after the Tang Dynasty, of again the Ming Dynasty.
Errors notwithstanding, I found this Asian soap opera entertaining. Here’s a short synopsis:
The Chrysanthemum Festival is only days away and the Empress is growing sicker by the day. The Emperor (Chow Yun-Fat) has personally designed the medicine as a cure to her “assumed” ten year old anemia. He has just changed her medicine by adding a poisonous herb that will drive her insane within two months of her having taken it on a regular basis. He has learned of her (conveniently) ten year affair with the crown prince, Wan, who was born from the Emperor’s first wife. The Emperor had his first wife removed, or she “died”, at the Crysanthemum Festival twenty-five years earlier, so he could marry the King of Liang’s daughter who is now Empress. Wan is unskilled and doesn’t want to be heir to the throne. He wants to marry his new love, Chan, the daughter of the very doctor that is poisoning his step-mother. The Empress learns of his new love and plots, out of jealousy, to have their family removed from the palace. She gets the doctor’s wife to report to her of the poison and learns in the process who this woman really is, the remarried first wife of the emperor! The two women have a shared hatred for the Emperor and the Empress decides to stage a coupe to place her son Jai, the second born, on the throne ahead of Wan.
Leave a Reply