The Curse of Golden Flower

Title : The Curse of Golden Flower
Starring : Gong Li, Chow Yun Fat, Jay Chou
Director : Zhang Yimou
Genre : Tragedy, history, Drama
Studio : Sony Picture Classic
Beijing New Picture Co. Ltd
Run Time : 114 Minutes

The Curse of Golden Flower, one of the most credible movie that has successfully carried cultural and historical values of human being was precisely released in the late of 2006. This movie creatively portrayed the very secret side of Tang Dinasty history in the year of 928M. Marrital affairs, fighting for power, and rebellion (kudeta) became the ’main menu’ of the story.



Zhang Yimou as the director is very skillful in performing a very likely and natural setting. Thus, the movie lovers are guarranted to find almost every corner of the palace that is authentic. It seems that the Tang Dynasty particularly exists at the moment.
Actually, what makes the story seems to be challenging is that the creator of The Curse of Golden Flower is able to combine an action genre and an esthethical performance at once. Culture, physical and phsycological setting, and characterization were pictured as it was. That is why, this performance is also suitably prefered as the historical review of the human civilization in old China around the year 928M.
Even though the theme of this movie is not categorized as something new, the structure of the plot is composed in very creative way. There were many hidden tricks and strategies along with the plot that succesfully made audiences felt challenged to picture every single scene of the Curse of Golden Flower.Gong Li, who was accordingly elected as one of the main character that lived not only under an image of her marrital affair with her son in law, Prince Wan, but also by having covered hostility with his husband, the emperor of Tang Dynasty (Chow Yun Fat) became an interesting exposition by which problems and conflicts then appeared gradually.
Still, the basic idea of the story was the queen’s desire to send down her husband from his position as the emperor and promote her son, Prince Ji as the next emperor. From the very beginning, the Curse of Golden Flower was set out likely as a map of puzzle that offered an audience with a lot of hidden tricks. Meanwhile, the triangle love affair between the queen, prince Wan (queen’s son in law), and the daughter of palace traditional healer (tabib istana), the presence of the emperor’s love affair before he married to the queen, the emperor’s trick to kill his wife softly by poisoning her through her medicine herbs, fight for power among princes, and the queen’s military rebellion on the day of the golden flower festival became a complication that led the story into climax.
The Curse of Golden Flower which was released by Sonny Classic Pictures in partnership with Beijing New Picture Co. Ltd in December 22, 2006 inferred some substantial messages especially in the effort of building up an ideal human civilization, in a broader sense. Let’s see how the story accordingly let people know about the hazardous effect of negative political affair, the feeling of being intimidated, unfairness action that will probably invite negative reaction and the importance of keeping up the harmony of a family. Above all, the movie would also like to tell the people that a member of empire family are an ordinary human being who have also the ’black’ side of personal life while many people think that both emperor and queen especially are a holy person.
In a broader sense, the similar story basically exists in everyday life because naturally every individual has personal desire to be more powerful among others. Moreover, marrital affair, political dishonesty, rebellion (kudeta), and power manipulation have become a part of society which are transformed in a very softly covered way. It can be assummed that almost no country with no affair.
Whatever it is, the Curse of Golden Flower that performed a dramatic ending in which almost hundreds rebellion troops of the queen’s died on the hand of emperor’s personal spy troops. In spite of the fact that she with all her plans to send his husband down from the kingdom were failed, her desire to expose all emperor’s affairs and promote her son to be the king succeeded.
Beyond the structure of the plot (problem, conflict, climax) that have been discussed above, there is the law of the plot that also supports the perfomance of certain movie that is plausibility, suspense, and surprise. In the term of plausibilty, the Curse of Golden Flower is logic enough, even tough some phsycal and phsychological settings were set out in the traditional China while suspense was not performed maximally because all scenes were covered almost in a common way. Only few of them contained such suspense impressions, even tough musical background was arranged very well. Likewise, surprise did not too much appear. For that reason, some movie reviewers claimed that Zhang Yimou emphasizes the physical performance rather than the content of the story.
No matter what the criticism, factually the Curse of Golden Flower is able to achieve fourteen nominations in Hong Kong Film Award 2007. One prestigious achievement in the history of literary works that the movie creator has ever have.