Review of Farewell My Concubine (1993) by Kevin M. W — 07 Jan 2013

Weird that such an epic was one of the last Chen Kaige films I saw. Much like his future work "Temptress Moon", this movie is like a "Titanic" situation - it's an epic drama set around famous real-world history.

As usual this film is so well done, no one anywhere could say it's not. It's immaculately shot and very brainy. God bless the few movies out there that are built on implications rather than exposition of every story thread and each character's every thought.

However, I also feel Chen Kaige's films lack one je-ne-sais-quoi that Zhang Yimou brings to the table, even though Chen's movies are by and large much more epic and deliciously sick often. Both men are brave and brilliant, and shoot tragedy and beauty as if they are one and the same.

But somehow Kaige's movies neither move me nor excite me like Yimou, even though they're more grandiose and cinematic.Due to its length and failure to connect to me personally very often, I give it a low 4/5.

It's highly depressing to take in. Before the 2 hour mark it almost became comical to me in continuing to show only shitty things happening to these people. Come on. Tragedy is tragedy, ok, but you can't even have ANY levity? As a musician I have to say: How can you have forte without piano? So I was a little disappointed.

Luckily the third act finally got to the point and saved the movie.Some will disagree with this but for me, much like "The Godfather", this is more important to history than it is to the history of cinema greatness.

And like "The Godfather" and "Ran" and epic-length character studies like it, it's nice to watch but only every 5-10 years or so, so you can forget it again, because it's all story and acting -- once you know what happens, there's little to keep you going back.

That's my personal opinion of a lot of 150-min-plus dramas. This is a great cinema documenting of 20th century chinese opera singer life, so yeah. Nice. The end. This movie is not a crucial film in my life but.

..if you're a cinemaphile and you haven't seen it. . . what are you doing? It and the rest of Yimou and Kaige are important to see.