oktjabr

Raise the Red Lantern is masterful piece of film history.

A bleak tale of sexual subjugation and ruthless scheming in a single opulent household in 1920s China, Raise the Red Lantern portrays four women locked in struggle for attention from the master of the house, who every day favours one of his concubines with special honour of spending a night with him. And as usual among the hereditary nobility, the highest achievement is pregnancy resulting a male child.

The tense plot is perfected by the backdrop of suffocating ancient mansion built out of dull bricks and adorned expensively with etchings and drapery, and staffed with servants. The watcher barely gets a glimpse of the outside world as if nothing even existed outside the walls of the compound where the women are imprisoned in concubinage. And almost as faceless is the master himself, whose face we never see in close up shot.

Cinematography and set building stand out as excellent, with stark reds of the drapery and lanterns, contrasting with the muted greys of the mansion itself, later covered by a blanket of snow.

Decent cast in cliched roles and okayish visuals for middle-range budget combine their strength to blow some life (heh) into rather generic scifi-horror adventure taking place on cramped conditions of near-future International Space Station. The darkly lit station as a homage to Alien-franchise works and even evokes a few claustrophobic thrills along the way. Presumably trained scientist crew sure makes some perplexing decisions dealing with the situation at hand, but hey, isn't that almost a scifi/thriller trope nowadays?

Ultimately, the twists and turns, the nooks and crannies of Life have been seen many times in predecessor films. Life is in the end rather forgettable - though I found it sufficiently entertaining especially since it runs compact 110 minutes unlike many modern films that clock well over 2h and outstay their welcome.

Russian dashboard camera footage has become sort of an internet cliche - filling youtube and even old-fashioned homevideo TV programs with crumpling metal and shattering glass of haphazard Russian road traffic, with drunken maniacs spliced in.

Fortunately The Road Movie isn't just a highlight reel of spinning car wrecks, but also includes both bizarre, tragic and humorous occurences. My personal favourite were the guys who talked about boozing and slaughtering some animal, but accidentally drove out and into a river, driver laconically commenting "That's it. We are sailing". Talk about Russian fatalism.

In a fact, the subtitles that actually open the discussions of (mostly) unseen passengers make the compilation stand out as a worthwile, though at times slightly boring documentary piece.

As a sidenote, one of the other reviews refer to the clip where we see a blazing fireball streak the sky and occupants of the car wonder what the heck it was - the guy who says it was a meteor was correct - it was so-called Chelyabinsk meteor that was (fittingly enough) captured by multiple Russian dashcams.