‘Curse of the Golden Flower’ finds Chinese director Zhang Yimou working on his broadest canvas yet. Set near the end of the Tang dynasty, the film charts how the Imperial court unravels after the Emperor (Chow Yun Fat) returns to it unexpectedly from fighting in Mongolia. Gong Li, who plays the Empress, is re-united with Zhang for the first time since their professional and personal split a decade earlier. As in ‘Raise the Red Lantern’ and ‘Ju Dou’, their theme is encroaching madness and architectural splendour. This time the scale is so vast, and the images (by cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding, who also shot ‘Hero’ and ‘House of Flying Daggers’) are so dazzling that Cecil B. DeMille and the Shakespeare films of Akira Kurosawa come to mind.
To see the trailer, click [here].