chichunrong One of the most precious article of China. the print of Chinese culture, life and emotions in that times.

ruruki The director absolutely pay attention to details. Like xiao si captured by red guard is allusion to when he replace dieyi. Juxian suicide allusion to laizi suicide. A lot of scene were like that to bring the concept of karma which often mentioned at the movie. The ending was confusing but after watching Birdman ending I believe dieyi died then xiaolou scream dieyi but then smile and saying 'douzi' as means he saw dieyi as a man while it just his imagination. This movie is confusing but easy to analyze if paying a lot of attention to detail. For example the shadow of burning candle on Xiaolou Juxian photo. That is why every scene is very interesting to watch. To be honest, Chinese movie today is terrible which it so surprising to find this movie so great. If only China stop censoring everything they would beat Hollywood already because China has lot of talented filmmakers. And plus point is Leslie. He is so gorgeous in make up that his beauty defeats Juxian (Gong Li is much manlier that the rest of male character though) and make everyone in gay. Minus point is propaganda. Communist has better manner than Nationalist? Please just compare Mainland and Taiwan now. But better than Jackie Chan who is CCP whore (although his action great). I would recommend any Fujoshi out there to include this in 1001 boy's love to watch before you die.

p-seed-889-188469 I have had a great deal of trouble writing this review. Every time I make a start I can find nothing to get my teeth into and no coherent thread to interconnect my thoughts. While there are many potential sub-topics they all seem to stand in isolation. While this may simply be a reflection of my inability to string two sentences together I think in this case it pretty accurately summarizes the issues I have with this movie.It is difficult to figure out what this movie is and if asked to summarise it in 25 words or less I would be flummoxed. Is it a Chinese history movie? An opera movie? A Chinese culture lesson? A love story? A story of betrayal? A story of pseudo or actual homosexuality? It is snippets of all of these and probably more, but it does not really do justice to any of them. Basically it suffers from multiple personality disorder and unfortunately we don't get enough time with any of them to relate to any of them. Yes, the history and cultural aspects are interesting in their way but don't really add anything to our understanding of the horrors of the Japanese invasion of China, the Nationalist/Communist struggle, the early Communist era and the later Cultural Revolution. Yes, it is a "love story" between the two actors who play the King and the Concubine, but we never experience any passion or come anywhere close to connecting to either of these characters to really care. The "King" character in particular is very undeveloped, little more than a cardboard cut-out who happens to be the object of the "Concubine's" unrequited love. The character played by Gong Li is also skin deep and we never really care about her or her relationship with the "King" actor – indeed the random and non-sensical way in which these two characters become engaged simply nukes any credibility that this relationship might have had, and by extension destroys the credibility of any other relationship on the movie, most importantly the pivotal one between the "King" and the "Concubine". The betrayal, which I gather meant something personal to the director, is dealt with too curtly to have any effect at all. The character of the "son", raised from an abandoned baby, is totally illogical and we simply don't get to know him well enough to care about him or understand why he would possibly want to betray his adoptive parents. It all just seems facile and silly. We never really understand (or at least, I don't) the "homosexual" overtones of the "Concubine". Was he simply beaten into a form of insanity in which he thinks he is always in character as a woman? Is he actually a homosexual? His "king" friend seems to be too thick to understand the "Concubine's" feelings for him and this to me trivializes the whole "affair". And to be honest, none of the characters come across as being particularly nice, in fact the Concubine character comes across more as a petty, whinny, jealous, lightweight flake than a tragic figure we could weep for.OK, just because a film is not perfect doesn't mean you should not watch it. "Farewell My Concubine" is one of those films which is a "must see" despite its failings. If it falters as an emotionally satisfying and coherent movie it is a stunning technical tour de force and a masterpiece of its kind. Just to have made a movie of this scope is an achievement, almost to the point that its success is secondary, crazy as that may sound. It is a movie of such breadth that it is impossible to take in completely in one sitting, and that is perhaps the ultimate test – you know you need to see it again to understand it but can you care enough about it to make that effort? But – trust me - you need to see this movie – your education as a movie goer is incomplete unless you do. You will enjoy it, and you will be moved to have an opinion, one way or the other.

rjciez After finishing watching "The Last Emperor", I found quite entertaining the way they portrayed events of modern Chinese history throughout the story of somebody's life. Since I know that movie might be a Hollywood-esque portray of those events, I looked for a movie with Chinese actors, that also developed through key events of modern Chinese history (e.g. the warlords, revolution, etc). Netflix suggested me "Farewell my concubine".This movie was definitely not my cup of tea:I found the first hour brutally violent, and hard to watch (the first 45-60 minutes). It might have been because in my opinion, the violence portray seemed to not help the development of the story.The movie felt too long, and probably since I did not like the first hour of the movie due to the fact stated above, the last hour and a half felt a bit boring (something I did not feel in "The last emperor" which was also a loooong movie).Finally. This is my own bias, since I do not like opera, the opera scenes seemed highly repetitive and the high pitch voice was hard to bear.