Farewell my concubine summary PDF

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Marie Thomas Chinese Cinema Farwell My Concubine February 9, 2015

Scene 1: When talking about the first scene to discuss I need to lump the first scene and the very last scene together, because they essentially mirror the other, they become a bookend. The very first scene in Farewell my concubine has to be one of my favorites, the scene where one has no idea what’s going on but the film opens with a long tracking shot that is from the ground. The shot displays an idea of importance and symbolizes that something important is to come. We learn later in the last scene that what is to come is the death of Dieyi, the character who played the Concubine throughout the story. In both of these scenes there is a mist clouding the background, the colors of their costumes are blander, more boring, and the focus is more of the Chinese opera music that plays. The two main characters rehearse their parts as they have done many times before and then the scene slows down, a slow motion take of Dieyi as he turns to look at the camera, a close up of his face for a couple seconds, and he gives a small little smile to the camera. The shot switches to a hand on a sword, drawing it out slowly the Chinese music is swift and fast as the audience watches in anticipation. The film doesn’t show the act of suicide, they never actually do as suicide happens 3 times in this movie. The only difference between this act of suicide and the others is normally they show the aftermath of the person hanging. For Dieyi however they focus on the bright light of the stage that he never left even in death. And the audience hears the sound of dropping sword that sliced something. Silence until the camera zooms in for a c/u on Xiaolou’s face. The expression that adorns his face as he calls for his brother is one of panic, the sadness that is expressed by the cry is deafening. The zoom continues as a c/u on his face, the expression unchanging of one of no emotion, one that is upset, until a

hint of a smile appears on Xiaolou’s face before the screen fades to black. This ending is a result of emphasis of the Cultural Revolution in Chinese Society. The foreshadowing of his suicide by the way Dieyi performed the Beijing Opera for the last time with more despair than normal. Scene 2: The next scene that provides a different cinematorgraphy feel is the scene with Old Man Zhang when he is summoned to the quarters. It is at this moment that we get to see the world from Dieyi’s perspective. We also get to see the deflowering of Douzi. He’s still just a boy then, after he’s submitted to be a girl. He’s felt what it’s like to be a star for the first time and then he is called in alone to meet with Old Man Zhang who forces himself on him. I think it is this scene that captures the turning point for Douzi, that it is here that the lines between being himself and being a concubine become blurred. In the room that Douzi enters, the room is misty and Old Man Zhang is already on another girl who is disregarded when Douzi enters the room. The color scheme in this scene warms deeply and shows a lot of the orange and red that has been meant to vocalize power and dominance, which is exactly what, happens to Douzi in this scene. We see a very scared Douzi in this scene leading up to what his submitting to his role is, because it is hear that his role in brought into his life off of the stage. The camera focuses mostly on long shots of Douzi in this scene before switching back between old man zhang, the pee cup and Douzi in the end, the chase scene and in the end the capture that happens to Douzi in the end. We do not need to see the molestation happen and it was never totally addressed but as the audience, we know. Article 1: Jenny Kwok Wah Lau discusses the ideas of history, melodrama and ideology in contemporary pan-chinese cinema within Farewell My Concubine. He speaks a lot about Chen Kaige as “in.” Farewell my Concubine is largely considered one of the best Chinese films and Kaige’s masterpiece. I know this because of this article and because I knew of the film before we

even watched it, I mentioned it to one of my cinema friends an all they could rave about was how awesome a movie this was. My friend and Wah Lau commented on many of same ideas, they thought about how Concubine managed to tackle concepts that were more than the movie was about. There was cultural revolution in the movie, the movie spanned about 55 years of two boy’s lives and through a Beijing opera play. In this film Chen managed to find an artistic quality about a cultural and national ideology and be able to make these messages apparent in a movie. He looked into the mistaken identity, how people will do things under pressure that they know are wrong, but he also managed to show the changing of the times through the film, making it the masterpiece that it is. Article 2: Wendy Larson the author of the second article, “The Concubine and The Figure of History: Chen Kaige’s farewell my concubine” focuses on the cinematic representation of Chinese culture by scenes of traditional poetics like the traditional opera, the emotional subtlety and faint sadness, understatement, indulgence in violence with sound and fury like the Red Sorghum and the shatter any illusion of an innocent utopia. The article also speaks about Chen Kaige’s films that highlight his portrayal of Chinese history and historical abstracts and contradictions. Larson manages to explain the idea of the Concubine and cultural position of a secondary wife, a female entertainer, a marginalized beauty, which in a way is how Dieyi became throughout his role in the film. That led to a problem of complex issues that were shown through the idea of mistaken and lost identity in farewell. As Larson explains, that Dieyi is a symbolic woman. Yes, he is male but in the film he takes on the role of a woman. Not only in his stage life but also in his real life, because he always defied that idea by saying “I am by nature a boy and not a girl.” But eventually to survive, to stop being beaten and to realize for him to become a successful opera actor that he has to submit....