Curse of the Golden Flower (Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia)

Dazzling visuals give this transposed Greek tragedy an epic feel but in the end Curse of the Golden Flower is a tale of betrayal and revenge inside a single family. Chow Yun Fat is the father and Li Gong the mother of the two younger sons–though she appears far too young to be the mother of the older of her boys, well, it is a movie.

Set 1100 years ago during the T’ang Dynasty in China, an ambitious soldier has completed his rise to power and consolidated control of the empire. The Empress, daughter of the ruler of a neighboring kingdom, has reached the end of her usefulness. His three sons are all grown but Wan, the oldest, is a weakling, Yu, the youngest, a bit mad and Jai, the middle, cannot bear the way his father has betrayed his mother.

The annual Chrysanthemum festival is drawing near, an event with special significance for the family. Not only is it the day the Emperor chooses to celebrate the values of his monarchy, it is also the anniversary of the death of his first wife, his eldest son’s mother. Further, the Empress has found out that her husband has added a poison to her daily medicine, a concoction of his own composition.

To celebrate, then, the Empress has arranged that at the opening of this year’s festival a coup will be staged; she will be rid of her disloyal husband and the son of his first wife. This is a royal soaper so in addition, Crown Prince Wan is having an affair with the lovely daughter of the Imperial Doctor and she and her father are the ones adding the poison to the Empress’ medicine–and the wife of the Imperial Doctor is the person who told her of it.

Writer/director Yimou Zhang (House of Flying Daggers, Hero) continues to use the screen as a vast movie canvas, swaths of brilliant color always in motion. Golden Flower is played out on the huge stage of the Forbidden City in Beijing and the coup attempt involves, literally, thousands of soldiers between the two sides. One army is dressed all in gold, the other in steel, and despite the numbers a great deal of stealth is involved. The palace interiors dwarf the cast, the walls and doors huge blocks of fabrics, and the costumes, especially of the royal family, massive affairs that somehow do not restrict movement.

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