Farewell My Concubine (film)

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This article is about the film; for other media with the same title, see Farewell My Concubine.
Farewell My Concubine

Movie poster Cannes Film Festival
Directed by Chen Kaige
Produced by Hsu Feng
Written by Lilian Lee (also novel)
Lei Bik-Wa
Lu Wei
Starring Leslie Cheung
Zhang Fengyi
Gong Li
Music by Zhao Jiping
Cinematography Gu Changwei
Editing by Pei Xiaonan
Distributed by Miramax Films
Release date(s) Flag of the United States 15 October 1993
Running time 171 min.
Language Mandarin
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Farewell My Concubine is a 1993 Chinese film directed by Chen Kaige which depicts the effects of various Chinese political turmoils during the 20th century on a Peking opera troupe. Its Chinese title is Bàwáng Bié Jī (Traditional Chinese: 霸王別姬, Simplified Chinese: 霸王别姬), which literally translates as (the) Hegemon-King Bids Farewell to (his) Concubine.

The film is considered by critics to be one of the central works of the Fifth Generation movement that brought the Chinese film directors of that period to world attention.[citation needed] Like several other Fifth Generation films, Farewell My Concubine explores the effect of China's turbulent political landscape during the mid-20th century on human lives. In this case, the lives are those of two Peking opera performers and the woman who comes between them.

The film is an adaptation of the novel by Lilian Lee.

Contents

[edit] Miramax Edited Version

At the Cannes Film Festival, the film was awarded the highest prize, the Golden Palm Award. Miramax Films mogul Harvey Weinstein purchased the distribution rights and removed ten minutes. This is the version seen in U.S. theaters (and also in the U.K.) According to Peter Biskind's book, "Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film", Louis Malle, who was president of the Cannes jury that year, said: "The film we admired so much in Cannes is not the film seen in this country (referring to the U.S.A.), which is twenty minutes shorter - but seems longer because it doesn't make any sense. It was better before those guys made cuts."

Most of the cuts were not long extended scenes, but rather a minute or so from many different scenes. [1]

The uncut film has been released by Miramax on DVD, and is the original 171-minute version.

[edit] Synopsis

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Please improve this article if you can (March 2008).

The movie opens in 1977, the year after the end of the Cultural Revolution, with two men in Beijing Opera costumes walking down a hallway, one in a female role, the other as a stage king. They enter a large room and are greeted by a voice off camera who recognizes them as actors of the Beijing Opera troupe. They haven't performed in seven years. A single spot light falls on the two actors.

The scene, now in sepia, is 1924. A woman is walking hurriedly with a small child in her arms through a crowded Chinese market. A man stops her and tries to speak to her but she roughly pushes him off and continues as he shouts,"Whore!" She and the child approach a large crowd of people who are standing to view a small acting troupe of boys perform for coins in the street with their aging director, Master Guan, standing near by. One of the boys tries to run away but the large boys run to stop him, a man in the audience is insulted at this and starts to pick a fight with the director. The boys return with the run away and an older boy, Duan Xiaolou, takes matters into his own hands. Xiaolou, then called Shitou [Stone] shames the crowd by breaking a stone on his head. The crowd cheers and throws stones as the mother smiles and the little boy watches.

The mother takes the boy to the troupe house but Master Guan refuses to take him because of his noticeable birth defect, a superfluous finger. The mother runs down the street to a small shop. The child whimpers that his hands are freezing as his mother covers his eyes then uses a large knife to cut her son's extra finger off. She returns him to the director and signs the contract with his thumb print in blood. His mother leaves without a word, never to be seen again.

Douzi [Bean], makes friends with Laizi and Shitou. Laizi craves candied crab apples. He and Douzi escape but return after seeing an opera performance that makes Douzi weep and ask how he can become such a star. They return to the school to see Master Guan brutally beating Shitou for allowing their escape. Douzi appears and Laizi hides to eat his crab apples. Douzi walks to the beating bench to accept his punishment. The enraged Master Guan begins to beat him mercilessly with a wooden sword. Douzi never screams though Shitou crawls begs him to say he is sorry and tell the master that he has beaten him well. Shitou charges the master but is thrown back when the assistant yells for the master to come: Laizi has hanged himself.

Douzi quickly attaches himself to Shitou, a young actor with talent, bravado, and a short temper. Dieyi is trained to play female roles. He practices the monologue "Dreaming of the World Outside the Nunnery," stumbling when he is to say, "I am by nature a girl, not a boy," instead of the other way around. The monologue comes from the kunqu "The Record of an Evil Sea," kuhai (the Evil Sea) being a Buddhist term for a life of sorrow. At the same time, Xiaolou learns to hone his skills as a jing, a painted-face male lead.

The crisis comes when a famous theatrical agent, Na Kun, a Manchu, visits the troupe. Douzi is brought out to recite his bravura role, but he fumbles the lines again and the agent begins to leave. With the future of the troupe at risk, Shitou grabs a smoking pipe and crams it into Douzi's throat until he gargles in his own blood. Suddenly there is a soft whisper of, "I am by nature a girl... not a boy." Douzi stands slowly, blood trickling down his face and approaches Na Kun, reciting the verse perfectly.

The scene cuts to Douzi in full costume at an elaborate stage in front of a large audience reciting the verse again. He sings in a high mock female voice as Master Guan, Na Kun, and a wispy bearded elderly man watch on. The aging man is Eunuch Zhang. He points to Douzi and keeps whispering about his talent. Douzi then is joined on stage by Shitou,in full costume of the Concubine's King. They sing the famous duet together and the audience roars.

The two are acclaimed for their performance and are requested for an audience with the aging employer. Before going in Shitou admires a beautiful sword stating that if he were emperor Douzi would be his queen. Douzi is happy that he is so thrilled with the sword and says that one day he hopes to give Shitou a sword like that. The boys are then whisked outside to meet the employer but only to be told that Douzi is going in alone.

Douzi is taken into the private rooms of Eunuch Zhang, and unexpectedly walks in on the old man in a lascivious embrace with a young girl. Douzi is afraid as the man eyes him up and down. He refuses to step up to the man and wishes to go find Shitou because,"I have to pee." The old man brings a lovely glass dragon jar and places it in front of Douzi and tells him to pee. Douzi does and the man stares in lusty amazement at the boy's body. Douzi quickly pulls his pants back up as the man reaches for him, he tries to flee but the man overpowers him and pushes him to the ground. Shitou then meets Douzi outside many hours later and can not get him to say a word. On their way home, Douzi spies a baby abandoned in the street. The troupe master urges Dieyi to leave the baby, saying "we each have our own fate, or yuanfen, but Dieyi takes him in and eventually trains him.

Both Shitou and Douzi become renowned stars of Beijing opera and take on the stage names Cheng Dieyi, now played by Leslie Cheung, and Duan Xiaolou, now played by Zhang Fengyi. The adult Dieyi is in love with Xiaolou, but the sexual aspects of his affection are not returned. When they become a hit in Beijing, a patron, Yuan Shiqing, played by Ge You, slowly courts Dieyi. Xiaolou, in the meantime, takes a liking to Juxian, played by (Gong Li), a headstrong courtesan at the upscale House of Flowers. (Although she is later accused of being a "prostitute", she was somewhat more elevated than Dieyi's mother in the first part of the film). Xiaolou intervenes when a mob of drunk men harass Juxian and conjures up a ruse to get the men to leave her alone, saying that they are announcing their engagement. Juxian later buys her freedom and, deceiving him into thinking she was thrown out, pressures Xiaolou to keep his word. When Xiaolou announces his engagement to Juxian, Dieyi and Xiaolou have a falling out. Dieyi calls her "Pan Jinlian," a "dragon lady" from the novel Golden Lotus. Dieyi takes up with Master Yuan, who gives him Zhang's sword. Master Guan shames them into re-forming the troupe.

The complex relationship between these three characters is then tested in the succession of political upheavals that encompass China from the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The film also follows the fates of Na Kun, who turns his theater troupe over to the new government after 1949, and the abandoned baby, who is trained in the female roles. He is called "Xiao Si", or "Little Fourth Brother", which has the same sound as "little death." They go through Japanese Occupation, Kuomintang regime, Liberation in 1949, as the People's Liberation Army enters the city, and the Cultural Revolution in which the traditional opera is attacked as feudal. The portrayal of these events led the film to be initially banned in China.

[edit] Source text

Main article: Farewell My Concubine (play)

Running parallel with the film is the Peking opera play that is also known as Farewell My Concubine. As Dieyi and Xiaolou gain fame and notoriety within Peking opera's social circles, this play becomes Dieyi and Xiaolou's staple act and is performed numerous times throughout the film. The play is not nearly as long as the film may make it seem, and can actually be performed from start to finish within fifteen minutes.

The events in the film parallel the play. The Concubine's fatal devotion to her doomed emperor is echoed by Dieyi's devotion to Xiaolou. At one point in the film, Xiaolou snaps to Dieyi, "I'm just an actor playing an emperor. You really are Yu Ji."

[edit] Awards and nominations

DVD cover for Farewell My Concubine (US)
DVD cover for Farewell My Concubine (US)

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Awards
Preceded by
The Best Intentions		 Palme d'Or
1993
tied with The Piano		 Succeeded by
Pulp Fiction
Preceded by
Indochine		 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film
1994		 Succeeded by
Farinelli
Preceded by
Raise the Red Lantern		 BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language
1993		 Succeeded by
To Live
v • d • e
Films directed by Chen Kaige
Yellow Earth (1984) • The Big Parade (1986) • King of Children (1987) • Life on a String (1991) • Farewell My Concubine (1992) • Temptress Moon (1996) • The Emperor and the Assassin (1999) • Killing Me Softly (2002) • Together (2002) • The Promise (2005) • Mei Lanfang (2008)
v • d • e
Cinema of China