Inimigos do Império

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.

I'm a big fan of Chinese movies, Ziyi Zhang and Shakespeare, so I was definitely looking forward to this movie. The story is inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet and does an excellent job of translating the classic to an historic setting at the end of the Tang dynasty. I especially enjoyed the reinterpretation of Hamlet's mother as Prince Wu Luan's former lover (there was always something uncomfortably incestuous in Shakespeare's original). The acting is superb with kudos to both Ziyi Zhang and You Ge for creating a pair of very complex characters as Empress and Emperor. Some of the dialog is poetic in spite of not being Shakespearean. The sets were sumptuous. And Qing Nu's song at the end was beautiful!

So where did it go wrong? Except for Qing's song, the rest of the music was annoyingly obtrusive. Most of the action scenes were stylized and shot in slow motion. And many times the annoying music was playing during the slow motion action sequences, which effectively doubled the annoyance. Only the Prince's "audition" was a meaningful, well constructed action sequence. Finally, it could have been edited better with the movie reduced by about 15 minutes. There were several scenes that just didn't make sense. For example, there is a beautiful shot of Empress Wan entering the water naked, but it has no relation to what came before or after (ok, maybe that scene doesn't need context, but it just seemed out of place).

Overall, a decent movie with flashes of brilliance but having one too many flaws to rank any higher.

Definitely worth catching on the BIG screen, this is an epic about court intrigue in the Five Dynasties period, which follows in part the Hamlet setup of a murderous uncle usurper (You Ge) and his duplicitous queen (Zhang Ziyi), with an angry yet distant, brooding prince (Daniel Wu). The details and setting are different enough so that the new story carries its own weight and is interesting, however. The acting is strong (some excellent), the martial arts scenes memorable, and the sets are fantastic! This is not a fully realistic historical drama, by the way. Director Xiaogang Feng has crafted a modern art piece here, highly stylized in some parts, and often gory, especially the martial arts scenes, so if you can't stomach people flying and leaping like phoenixes (while disemboweling each other), skip it. The highly artistic feel of the film is kept somewhat in check by the gritty, used, and sometimes decaying feel of the palace, and more so by the tight, sparse dialog, the drama and the tension of the story. (Although following in the footsteps of highly stylized films like some of Zhang Yimou's, the focus returns very firmly to the story in this one, thankfully.) Similarly, the stunning beauty of parts of the film is balanced by the unmitigated ambition of the characters and their other dark flaws. These left the story with no single, simplified protagonist to cheer for – the very opposite of Hollywood formula. (The supporting role played by Xun Zhou might be an exception, but she's the very image of innocence and purity to a fatal flaw, and you pity her more than rooting for her.) The raw ambition, incestuous lust, jealous hate, betrayal and/or impotence darken nearly every character. While refreshingly different in this sense, it almost left me reaching for my goblet of hemlock. The Chinese title Ye Yan should have been translated as The Night Banquet rather than The Banquet (its English billing where I am), as the climax occurs at a midnight banquet unwisely set by the emperor at an inauspicious time, and it would have better reflected the darkness of the film.

Overall, I give it a big thumbs up.

It has long bothered me that Feng Xiaogang's movies don't get U.S. releases...and so I have had to make a habit of getting them sent to me from overseas or other equally inconvenient means. Having discovered his movies while living in China several years ago, I have been eagerly awaiting the release of Ye Yan and watching its progress through "pre-production" notes on IMDb. I was a little intrepid--one of the elements I love about Feng Xiaogang's movies is their ability to create inordinate beauty in contemporary settings that many would not see the beauty in...and I knew this was to be a film of another era. (In truth, I feared a little that Feng was going the way of Zhang YiMou--from the extraordinary into the traditional, beautiful, but traditional.) But I also love Feng's cultural, historical, and linguistic layering--and what better basis for that can their be but Hamlet? (Noting for fairness sake that I am an English Professor, and love Hamlet above all other Elizabethan dramas.) However, this film is, while traditional in setting, still extraordinary. The use of masks and movement play with Shakespearean notions of the play within the play/all the world's a stage. And, for me at least, this is the most impressive layer of the film. The story is well done; though one should not watch it as a "version" of Hamlet, but rather as "inspired by" Hamlet. Both Ye Yan and Hamlet address political, cultural and social issues through the story, but their issues are not identical. At this point, I would say this is my second favorite Feng Xiaogang film--only behind Tian Xia Wu Zei--but oh how I wish they would all be released in America. I read in the trivia of this web page that Ye Yan will be nominated for the Oscars and I hope this is true......mostly on the off chance that if it wins--despite the American public not seeing it--that it will lead to some of Feng Xiaogang's movies getting an American release.

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.