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Leslie Cheung and Fengyi Zhang are the still centre for decades of Chinese history in Farewell My Concubine |
Director: Chen Kaige
Cast: Leslie Cheung (Cheng Dieyi), Fengyi Zhang (Duan
Xialou), Gong Li (Juxian), Ge You (Yuan Shquig), Lu Qi (Master Guan), Ying Da
(Na Kun), Yidi (Eunuch Zhang), Zhi Yitong (Saburo Aoki), Lei Han (Xiaosi)
Chinese cinema isn’t well-known in the West. Maybe it comes
from China so long being behind its own Red Curtain. Farewell My Concubine was pivotal to introducing Chinese cinematic
culture to the West, winning a Palme d’Or and nominated for an Oscar. It’s
surprising in a way, as Farewell My
Concubine is a film that you almost need an intimate knowledge of Chinese
history to truly appreciate (which I’m not sure I do!). But not surprising in
another, as it is a glorious made, brilliantly acted and directed paean to the
warmth of the human spirit.
Told over 52 years, from 1925 to 1977, the film follows two
actors in the Peking Opera – Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) and Duan Xiaolou
(Fengyi Zhang). Brought up in a brutally tough actor training school, the two
become famous for their performances in the opera, Farewell My Concubine, about the suicide of a king’s concubine.
Dieyi plays the concubine, while Xialou plays the king. The two actors are held
together with a strong, almost unbreakable bond of brotherhood. But Dieyi also
has a romantic longing for Xiaolou. Their relationship is made more complex
after Xiaolou’s marriage to former courtesan Juxian (Gong Li) – but the three
quickly find a relationship of tolerance, support and understanding that is
tense but works. Around them China undergoes the Second World War, Japanese
occupation, Mao’s seizure of power and the Cultural Revolution.
Kaige’s film is an epic that places an intimate and personal
story at its centre and introduces global and national events which we largely understand
from the perspective of our characters. This is a brilliant way of showing the seismic
changes in China over this period – from the 1920s, which are so simple and
Dickensian in their set-up that they might as well be the fifteenth century, to
the increasingly brutal oppression of Mao’s regime. At the centre of all this
is the relationship between the three core characters.
This relationship is almost impossible to define, so richly
complex and human does it feel. It all rings immediately true – three people
who are held very closely together by bonds of family, shared past and mutual
dependency, but whose relationships are also rife with jealousies and regrets.
Deiyi oscillates between vulnerability and guarded resentment against everyone
around him. Xiaolou (brilliantly played by Fengyi Zhang, all warm-hearted
charisma but easily led by others) is both annoyed and frustrated by Deiyi, but
also goes to extraordinary lengths to protect him. Juxian (an enigmatic intelligent
performance from Gong Li) at first seems to be a manipulative presence who
wants to split the two of them apart, but comes to an unspoken accommodation
with Deiyi that recognises they have a lot of shared interests and love.
All of this is simply beautifully done, subtle, un-obvious and
brilliantly restrained, wonderfully acted by the three leads. Deiyi is a
fascinating character, struggling with his sense of identity, trained from an
early age to look and behave as much like a woman as possible. Is it any wonder
that it has had an impact on his sexual identity? (The film’s openness about
homosexuality – with Deiyi frequently being used for sex by his patrons – is
one of many reasons it was nearly banned in China). Deiyi feels unable to
express the feelings he clearly has, frequently falling back on imperiousness and
pride. Leslie Cheung is just about perfect in this role: fragile, brittle but
also harsh and unforgiving.
Kaige films all this beautifully in this visually striking
film, using a host of brilliant images and wonderful lighting. The film’s
opening hour covers the characters’ childhoods in the harsh training regime of
the opera school, where beatings are common. Every character, by the way,
accepts this as totally normal – in a striking later scene, the two adults meet
their mentor again and immediately revert back to mutely accepting physical punishment
for perceived wasting of their talent. One of the film’s striking commentaries
on China in fact is the difference between their deference and the defiance of
up-and-comer Xiaosi, who flat out refuses to take part in the harsh regime
Deiyi tries to introduce and later becomes a leading light in the Cultural Revolution.
It’s one of many ways the film uses the characters to demonstrate the changes
in China.
The section covering the childhood of the characters is
wonderfully done, a truly Dickensian series of events that will go on to define
the lives and impressions of the two characters, skilfully built around the
fate of a third friend – a more defiant joker who struggles far more to cope
with the discipline of the camp compared to Deiyi’s stoic acceptance and
Xiaolou’s matey deference. I truly loved this sequence and would happily have
watched it for ever, every moment is so well observed, the child actors are
marvellous and the claustrophobic world of the training school is immaculately
observed (the outside world is so absent that the appearance of a car is
actually a huge surprise as it makes you realise we are in the 20th
century).
But then this is a film that is set in a small interior
world, which shifts and changes subtly as the wider Chinese world moves around
it. The Japanese occupation seems to come from nowhere, a sudden interruption
of a world where the two actors struggle to please patrons. The continued
re-staging of the opera Farewell My
Concubine is striking for how little it changes, a still centre of artistic
conventionality (and it is conventional – every moment is handed down from
previous generations, with Xiaolou constantly criticised for using five steps
at one point where tradition demands seven). The imperious patrons rise and
fall around the actors, victims to a China which is shifting quicker than they
keep up.
Kaige’s film also sharply criticises the excesses of the
Cultural Revolution, that threaten this relationship and pressure the actors to
denounce both themselves and each other. The Chinese government of Mao changes
constantly in its views and demands, faster than many can keep up – and what is
acceptable one year becomes a capital crime the next year. Deiyi is ordered to
perform for the Japanese, and later nearly faces death for this. A patron pivotal
in saving him is later a man condemned for having that kind of power. Welcome
to China.
Farewell My Concubine
works because it puts the sprawling history in the background of this personal
story of the relationship between three characters who need each other in ways
they can hardly understand, increasingly drawn together as fixed points in a
changing world. When the rules of yesterday are the crimes of tomorrow, is it
any wonder you cling closer to the few people around you who understand and
remember what you were like and where you are from?
Deiyi, Xiaolou and Juxian are characters held together by
bonds that seem unshakeable, which allow them to frequently anger and attack
each other but constantly draw them back to each other to support and save each
other. Kaige’s understanding of this – and his brilliant discipline in refusing
to add moments of definition to the feelings between these characters, but
allowing us to interpret and form our own opinions of how their relationship
works – is brilliant, and Farewell My
Concubine is a brilliantly made, fascinating and infinitely rewarding film.
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