|
Chen Kaige
Ji-ng Ke-ci Qin Wang/ The Emperor and the Assassin (1989) is a
sprawling, lavishly choreographed,
historical drama with many subplots, the most expensive Asian production until then.
If it fails as a Shakespearean tragedy, it certainly succeeds as a visual feast.
The story is set two thousand years earlier, when the king of Qin, Ying, is
reminded by his priest of his divine mission:
to unite the seven kingdoms of China under his own rule.
A massive army of horse riders sets on the path of war through the plains
of China.
In the meantime prime minister Lu is summoned by the Queen Mother. She is living
a decadent life in the company of a young servile "Marquis" who was hired by the
prime minister seven years earlier. The Queen Mother announces that the Marquis
has found a suitable wife for the king: the princess of Han, who also happens to be the niece of the Marquis. The prime minister
objects that the king is about to annex Han. The Queen Mother is distressed
by the thought that sooner or later the king will destroy her homeland too, and
she will lose the tribute that her subjects pay her.
The Marquis behaves like an idiot but he is the Shakespearean fool who
actually talks sense into people while smiling: he insinuates to the prime minister that the king will not need him (the prime minister) anymore once
he has completed his conquests.
The king is just then conquering the kingdom of Han.
The king removes prime minister Lu when Lu advises him against completing
the conquest of the capital.
Upon hearing that he is to marry the niece of the Marquis, he humiliates
the Marquis in front of everybody.
Lady Zhao arrives, the beautiful young concubine of the king. The mother
herself feels that it is unfair to Lady Zhao that the king will marry another woman:
the king and Lady Zhao gre up together and is a clever woman.
She has come to tell the king that she wants to leave.
The king who si not afraid of any enemy is terrified at the idea that
his childhood friend and lover may leave him. She reminds him of many
tender moments of their childhood. Now that he is a powerful king she
doesn't feel the same anymore.
She asks him to go back to his Queen Mother's town so that they can
be happy together again, but the king has his divine mission to accomplish.
He dreams of his unified empire in front of a colossal map woven by
two artists of Han.
After Han falls to the mighty war machine of the king, Lady Zhao suggests that he takes the next kingdom, Yan, through intrigue instead of force.
She has her face branded by the royal prison guards
with the king's slave mark, and seem to enjoy the
idea of having become ugly. This allows her to travel to Yan and organize
a fake assassination plot against him. She seems ready to sacrifice
anything to make his dream come true. The king will then use the
assassination plot as an excuse to attack Yan.
The king and the concubine part ways after a last meeting in the royal
swimming pool where the king has built a bridge as an eternal tribute to
their love.
A female dwarf has already delivered to the prince of Yan the summon to
surrender.
In the meantime a professional swordsman, Jing, massacres an entire family except the blind daughter: she commits suicide. Devastated by by guilt,
he abandons his murderous career and becomes a tramp in the land of Yan.
When he decides to help a boy prisoner who has been hanged by the feet,
he is even willing to be humiliated in public rather than use violence.
Provoked, he accidentally kills the arrogant man who hung the boy
and then releases the boy.
Lady Zhao has witnessed the noble act and is fascinated by the beggar.
Jing is arrested and condemned to death by the prince of Yan.
The death sentence is to be carried out by smashing his head against
a stone wall. As the guards rocked him on a device that swings him
closer and closer to the wall, Jing refuses to scream.
Lady Zhao arrives in time to rescue him. Both Lady Zhao and the prince of Yan beg
him to accept the job to assassinate the king, but he refuses.
Tortured, he doesn't scream at all. Lady Zhao is falling in love with him.
Back at the palace the Marquis reveals to be a conspirator, and not a fool
at all. The Queen Mother had two children from him, who are kept in
hiding from the king. Men hired by the Marquis try to assassinate him.
His trusted general Fan protects him.
The Marquis fakes a message from the Queen Mother to former prime minister
Lu, asking for his help in the coup, but Lu senses that it is a plot to
install the Marquis (who used to be his servant) and then his son as king.
The Marquis' men attack the palace, but are exterminated (butchered and hatched to pieces even after they surrender). The king also seizes the Marquis' two sons and has them brutally murdered in front of their mother, the Queen Mother (they were therefore his half-brothers). Before being executed, the Marquis takes his revenge by revealing that the king is not a descendant of the previous king but the offspring of an affair between the Queen Mother and former prime minister Lu. The king is illegitimate. The king does not hesitate to sentence Lu (his father) to death.
Lu invites the king to kill him because it's the only way that he (the
king) can prove to the world that Lu was not his father. Lu never told the
truth because he wanted his boy to become king, and he now wants to be killed
to keep it that way. The king has him hanged, and then cries against his
father's dead body. When he stops crying, he orders Lu's entire family to
be killed. The king is going crazy.
In the meantime, Lady Zhao and Jing have falled in love: he is ready to fight a
duel for her, although again he refrains to kill the defeated enemy.
When general Fan runs away from the rapidly maddening king and takes shelter
at the Yan court, the king unleashes his army against the homeland of Zhao,
slaughtering even the children. Lady Zhao begs Jing to help her, but he refuses
to follow her as she heads for Zhao. She reaches her homeland only to find
scoreless of dead bodies. She confronts the mad emperor and accuses him of
betraying his divine mission to pacify the country.
She begs him to save the capital that is still resisting, but he has a personal
score to settle: that is the city where he was kept as a slave when he was a child.
Lady Zhao enters the capital while the war machine of the emperor is laying siege
and preparing for the decisive assault.
She finds bodies of children who have been buried alive in the sand and swears
eternal hatred to her old lover.
She returns to Jing and this time he accepts to fight the mad emperor, who in
the meantime has become even more unstable after his mother died.
Jing drinks with general Fan, who confides that he knows the secret that could
destroy the emperor, but then commits suicide rather than divulge it.
Jing arrives at the emperor's court disguised as an envoy from Yan carrying a
box with the head of the renegade general (as a sign of friendship) and a
box with the map of Yan (as a pledge of submission). He behaves like a coward.
He confesses that he has been sent to kill him and begs for mercy, but then
suddenly draws the knife and tries to kill the emperor. The emperor is
faster and runs away, chased by the assassin, while the crowd observes without
offering any help. Eventually the assassin fails miserably and is killed
by emperor. The emperor has won but cries when his rival dies. Lady Zhao comes
to take Jing's body and the emperor in vain asks her to stay. She leaves him
alone, but he smiles thinking that he has realized the dream of uniting China.
Feng Yue/ Temptress Moon (1996)
A girl is told by her father that opium is a good thing.
In 1911, in rural China, in the luxurious residence of the Pangs,
during a period of political turmoil, the terrible
girl Ruyi wreaks havoc in the villa while the news of the abdication of the
emperor reaches the elder in the ancestral hall, observed by a boy,
Zhongliang.
The little
Duanwu helps the servants catch the wild Ruyi who has entered the hall, thereby
committing sacrilege.
The film fast forwards several years,
to the decadent world of opium, trance and languid smiles of Shanghai.
Zhongliang's sister Xiuyi is the wife of the heir to the Pang fortune,
who is addicted to opium.
Zhongliang acts as their diligent servant.
The criminal even invites him to lose his virginity with her own sister.
Six months later, Zhongliang has become one of them. He specializes in
blackmailing people.
Back in the countryside, the elder Pang has died. His natural heir, Xiuyi's
husband, has been
reduced by poison to a complete idiot, and so power is given to Ruyi, his
sister, and Duanwu is appointed as her assistant.
The criminal boss he works for asks Zhongliang to go visit his sister and
to take Ruyi to Shangai.
Zhongliang has sex with a rich woman who believes in his love. The truth is
that Zhongliang is sleeping with her only so that they can later blackmail her.
He is a cold-hearted scoundrel.
Ruyi immediately causes trouble because she sends away the concubines, and the
elders are offended she didn't listen to their advice. They are also angry at
Duanwu for not stopping her, but he is absolutely faithful to her.
Ruyi is still an opium addict and Duanwu serves her.
Duanwu is basically doing what Zhongliang used to do for her.
Zhongliang's mission is to seduce Ruyi and help his boss steal her wealth.
He rapidly wins her heart, but then becomes himself jealous of Duanwu.
His sister is, in turn, jealous of Ruyi's power, but
Zhongliang himself is not tender with his sister, because he has not
forgotten how she treated like a slave when he was young and poor.
Because of their incestuous relations, Zhongliang cannot love anymore.
That trauma explains is cold-hearted attitude.
Another childhood trauma is responsible for the relationship between
Ruyi and Duanwu, who soon can't resist the needs of the flesh and become lovers.
But Ruyi also wants to sleep with Zhongliang, claiming that she was
merely practicing with Duanwu, except that Zhongliang can't make love to her.
His sister begs him in vain to take her with him.
Zhongliang, disgusted by the place, travels back to Shangai by himself.
Zhongliang is confronted by the boss and starts crying like a child.
He confesses he has been protecting his wealthy lover whom they were supposing
to blackmail.
The boss decides to send someone else to fetch Ruyi, with the excuse that
Zhongliang wants her.
Ruyi, who is pregnant, travels with Duanwu. Ruyi and Duanwu see the big city
for the first time and are a little scared by the crowd.
The boss decides to "heal" Zhongliang by showing his real nature to his
wealthy lover. But when the gangsters tell her that he was part of the scheme
to blackmail her, she jumps from the balcony.
Then the gangsters decide to do the same with Ruyi: show her her lover's
true face. Ruyi in vain asks him if he loves her. He can't answer.
Ruyi walks back home distressed. But the moment she opens the
door of her apartment, she is raped by Duanwu.
Ruyi and Duanwu travel back to the country villa.
Zhongliang follows them there, in vain begged by his sister.
This time he finds the strength to say that he loves her, but it is too late:
Ruyi has decided to marry and old flame.
Zhongliang, alone, remembers when he prepared the opium for
his sister's husband with the poison that turned him into an idiot.
He prepares the same opium for her and then leaves.
Duanwu will replace her as the head of the family.
Duanwu
The film is directed in a somewhat sloppy manner that does not help understand
the plot. Scenes change abruptly. Characters are not justified.
|
(Translation by/ Tradotto da xxx) Se sei interessato a tradurre questo testo, contattami
|
