Ye yan

The women' death is because of the love.

The men' death is because of the women.

Desire is the measure, is the excuse.

Finally, desire is defeated to the love and the death.

In this war, the winner is … …

Beautiful clothes, lovely music and song, strange marks, tragedy character, moving story. It shows you that what Chinese' value is, what the love is, what the human' heart is. You will think deeply from your heart, you may understand the different among the cultures to express the familiar story. Think about Hamlet.

People don't understand each other, if they do, there is no one alone.

The cinematography of this movie is wonderful, and anyone willing to sit through a movie of any stripe to see a fresh sword fight on a gorgeous mountainside should see this movie. I particularly liked the way that fighting scenes in the movie were sometimes juxtaposed next to musical performances complete with beautiful, slow movements by dancers. I think the comparison heightened my sense of the ballet-like quality of the otherwise violent confrontations. Those lead to consider seeing this movie on suggestions that it presents an artful re-imagination of Shakespeare's Hamlet--the one I read was in the Beijing Daily--should look elsewhere, however. This movie is a study in how a complex and interesting character study of one of the most enigmatic characters in the history of drama could be rendered both cliché and senseless.

Movies out of HK and China are increasingly rivaling or surpassing the best out of Hollywood in acting, cinematography, costuming and artistic vision. 'The Banquet' is a shining example.

This is a loosely based interpretation of Hamlet adapted for the Tang dynasty period. In my opinion there is too much energy spent on this site debating whether it is a good adaptation of Hamlet, comparing it to other Hamlet films, etc. It is not a straight "remake" of Hamlet - it obviously takes inspiration from the play, and uses many of its elements, and that's it. So just sit back, watch it and judge it on its own merits.

This is primarily a drama but it's sprinkled with great martial arts choreography a la Yuen Wo Ping. Many fight scenes follow the wu xia (fantasy kung fu) genre – just suspend your disbelief and enjoy the beautiful spectacle of it.

A riveting moment comes when a one of the Emperor's mandarins (scholars who rule over the provinces) introduces Wan as "Dowager Empress", language that means Wan is the mother of an Emperor (Prince Wu Luan) and is a slap in the face to Li. Wan and Generals alike must decide where their allegiances lie.

The acting is very good and I enjoyed Zhang Ziyi playing the lecherous Empress, You Ge playing a convincingly imperial Emperor and Xun Zhou as the naïve Qing in love with our 'Hamlet'.

One of The Banquet's strong points is it is absolutely stunning visually, right from the first scene in a verdant and swaying bamboo forest that makes you wonder if such a beautiful place really exists. The costumes throughout are incredibly rich and detailed.

It lags a little in the last half hour (maybe I was just tired) but to its credit does not run much longer than 2 hours.

Highly recommended.

"The Banquet" is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" which, I believe, is Shakespeare's most powerful literary creation, and one which has been adapted (as I count) 5 times in the silver screen (my personal fave is the version with Mel Gibson; I have yet to watch the one with Ethan Hawke). This adaptation is so loose that oftentimes it feels like it has its own originality and only drew inspiration from "Hamlet".

One of the original aspects of the film is that of the character played by Ziyi Zhang, which is a product of a revision of the original script. A revision which added quite a depth to the storyline. Gong Li (Memoirs of a Geisha, Miami Vice, Farewell My Concubine) was originally supposed to play Zhang Ziyi's part. Maggie Cheung (2046, Hero) was also considered for the role. Due to scheduling conflicts. When Ziyi Zhang took over the part, the script was rewritten to make the character younger. Her character is a former love interest of the Prince Wu Luan (the main character) but was later wed to the Prince's own father and eventually, to become the Empress to his uncle. Such a character has given a large amount of dramatic tension to the storyline and further complicates it, making the story more unpredictable even though it is an adaptation.

It is such a wicked delight to see Ziyi Zhang play such a dark snake of a character in this movie, a character who claims a love which is actually of self rather than something pure. Since her breakthrough in "Crouching Tiger..." she has proved time and again that the potency of her talent doesn't easily wither, and in her youth she has already made great performances, more than enough to satisfy a cinema-acting retiree. Likewise, impressive performances from Daniel Wu as the Prince Wu Luan, (the alluring & yummy) Xun Zhou as the Opheliac Qing Nu, Jingwu Ma as the wise Minister, and You Ge who also deserves much praise for playing the Emperor Li, a character who defies being generalized as black & white; a character which is richly layered with many levels. THE BANQUET is mainly drama, You do not watch this film for the Martial Arts, even though Yuen Woo Ping has a hand in the making of this film as both producer and action choreographer (I would consider Yuen Woo Ping as the living god of Martial Arts movies, having directed timeless classics like "Snake in the Eagle's Shadow" & "Drunken Master" until now, & was given international spotlight when he worked as Fight choreographer of "The Matrix" movies), but you watch this movie for its beautiful storyline. Although there are moments that induce awe in some of the fight sequences, these are expected to be minimal compared to the dialogue-driving motion of the film. It may even be observed that the martial arts here is a mere icing on the cake.

Along with that icing is the amazing visuals that it presents. From flying stunts, to set designs to costumes. You can feast your eyes upon the visuals, which wakes up viewers from a possible boredom. It employs a semi-surreal style of setting.

It seems that ever since it broke into worldwide popularity, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" has opened the floodgates for Chinese dramatic epics which are done in "closed form" of movies, movies which such a forced unnatural ambiance that generally use wire-works to do fantastic martial arts feats and exaggerated vibrancy and style on sets which depict surreal environments (although this style was long used in Hong Kong, but mostly only for action epics). But this type of fantasy-like genre was getting old and it needed to be complemented with really good story lines. Such was achieved by Yimou Zhang's "Hero" (which starred Jet Li & Donnie Yen). This same surreal "closed form" style is employed by THE BANQUET.

THE BANQUET is powerful, dramatically rich, and such a masterpiece of a work, as dark and beautiful as the Shakespearean tragedy from which it is based on.

this film is beautiful to look at. Scenery is great, the way the scenes are set up, the colours and the lighting are fantastic. Even the actors are beautiful to look at - Zhang Zhi Yi is at her sensual best.

The story did have some interesting twists but not too many which is why some on here are complaining it's not 'complex' or 'layered' enough. But compared to a regular Hollywood film and this one is much better.

The acting is uneven. Daniel Wu had a tough time adding any depth to his morose character. I guess he's the Chinese version of Hayden Christenson. Zhang Zhi Yi really shines as does Zhou Xun. Ge You also plays the usurping emperor with passion and adds a bit of humanity to him - he's not just an evil bad guy to be hated.

8/10