A couple of weeks ago, I was pondering over what I should do for my parents for this Christmas and the answer came in the form of a simple movie treat to The Curse of The Golden Flower, which features their favourite actor Chow Yun-Fatt as the Tang Emperor. I was happy to see them glued to their seats, soaking in all the splendour and fine acting by some of the greatest actors alive today.
The movie was good. With Chow Yun-Fatt and Gong Li leading a formidable cast of actors in an epic portray of imperial court politics during the height of the Tang Dynasty in China. Both of them are indeed some of the finest actors because their expressions are flawless in depicting all the irony and suffering behind the glorious surfaces of the Imperial Family. Jay Chou was also quite suitable in his role as a fillial prince who could not bear to watch his mother suffered the slow poisoning by his father and led an ill-fated rebellion against his father within the imperial palace. Although his portrayal of emotions are still a little rigid but he makes it up with a princely charisma during the rebellion as well as his final scene where he makes a choice between serving his mother the continued two-hourly poison or be punished with his body split into five by warhorses.
The fight scenes were quite brutal but most of the blood in the large-scale rebellion in the imperial palace was glossed over by computer-generated images. However, what struck me the most was the depth and development of the characters in the movie: the Emperor (with his deathly-cold rationale to maintain the order of the empire, the Empress (with her cunning determination to end her personal death sentence with a rebellion), the Crown Prince (with his loyalty tested against secret affairs with both the Empress and the Imperial Physician's daughter), the Second Prince (Jay Chou, with his intense fillial piety even at the face of certain defeat and death) and the Third Prince (with a shocking display of ambition and violence towards his very own family). Another noteworthy character was the First Empress (birth mother of the Crown Prince) who had impressive scenes showing her deep hatred and vengeance against the Emperor who had betrayed and framed her in order to ascend to the throne many years ago.
In The Curse of The Golden Flower, it doesn't really take massive, gory battles or lots of tear-wrenching scenes to make it a good movie. It was those scenes of characters holding back the tears through clenched teeth and the deceptive smiles behind the scheming minds that made it such an experience to witness excellent acting and of course, a great story told.
(Image Source: http://sg.movies.yahoo.com/The+Curse+Of+The+Golden+Flower/movie/13796/)
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