Matt Shea
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Morgan Bell
Cibbuano
David O'Connell
Mountain Fog
The Banquet (Ye Yan)
September 9th 2007 23:23
The Banquet is a lavish historical epic, depicting the court of intrigue and deception of the Tang Dynasty in ancient China. Stunning sets, beautiful costumes, truly elegant setpieces, all choreographed to give the audience a sense of how opulent the dynasty was.
Feng Xiaogang directed two excellent movies before this, A World Without Thieves and Cellphone, which I reviewed earlier this month. I was quite excited to see this movie, as it features some big-name actors and a lot of fabulous production.
It was, essentially, 2 hours of total boredom.
Don't get overexcited by the trailer, like I did:
Feng is, apparently, subscribing to what I like to call the 'Zhang Yimou School of Selling Out for Western Audiences'... Zhang Yimou is one of China's best known directors, from the famous Fifth Generation, and made some truly excellent movies.
Somewhere along the line, Zhang decided that there was a lot of money to be made overseas: he made Hero, then House of the Flying Daggers, and then the truly execrable Curse of the Golden Flowers, which was so bad and such a waste of money that I renamed it 'Gong Li's impressive cleavage bounces through a wasteland of million-dollar sets'.
Zhang realized that Western audiences were suckers for the Asian aesthetic... Westerners pay huge amounts of money for trinkets, ornaments and other cast-off detritus from China, and they were easily impressed by some colourful costumes and ridiculous Asian-sounding dialogue.
I predict his next 'big' movie will be equally fetid and named something along the lines of 'Cart of the Broken Donkey' or 'Gold of the Golden Gold' or 'Booty of the Chinese Empress'.
Why all this talk about Zhang Yimou? Well, Feng Xiaogang has done the same thing... The Banquet is so similar to Curse of the Golden Flowers, with Zhang Ziyi in the place of Gong Li. Feng's movie is marginally better, but it's based on Hamlet, which means there's a definite Western feel to it.
This Chinese article insults the movie, stating that Chinese people found it ridiculous. Hell, I found it ridiculous. I think Feng had intended to stun Western audiences with static scenes of ridiculous opulence, bizarre Eastern arts and wire fu, but the net result is you'll roll your eyes at this.
Feng drags the damn thing out for over 2 hours, and, by the end, when it's slow-motion scene, one after the other, you'll want to stab your own eyes out. For the sweet pleasure of darkness.
This movie is quite famous, though... the theaters in China were packed, and for one thing: the rear shot of a nude Zhang Ziyi entering a lavish pool for her bath. I've long advocated for more sexuality in Chinese movies, and I think we're on the brink of a new wave of social freedom from the most populous country on Earth. And thank the 12 gods!
Unfortunately for everyone that wanted to see Zhang naked, it's actually a body double, and one that is unhappy that she was uncredited for the role.
Other than the sexy parts, this movie falls flat on its barely developed face. The dialogue is awful and stilted, talking in boring metaphors to sound philisophical, and even Ge You, who is a fantastic actor, can't help move the story along. With this much money to spend, I feel sorry for Feng Xiaogang, who could have made a truly excellent production.
I say: Avoid this like the plague, unless, for some bizarre reason, you liked Curse of the Golden Flower. This is more of the same, but with better fight scenes.
See it for: It's all about the girls in the Tang Dynasty costumes. Why don't they still dress like that?
* the first image is from HelloZiyi.us, the second from this page, a gallery of Zhang Ziyi
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Comment by KylieW
Celebrity Obsession
Think I'll stay away from this one
Comment by Cibbuano
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Comment by Nickoftime's Sanity Corner
the trailer looks uh, ho-hum...Sorry such vivid costumes and set decorations weren't put to better use...
I'll take your advice and avoid it...
Great review though!
Take care,
Nick
Comment by Cibbuano
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