Zhang Yimou
8 titles · chinese fifth generation
A lantern is hung outside one of four wives' doors each evening in Raise the Red Lantern, and the household reads it to learn who has the master's attention tonight. Colour carries the information. That method survives the move to spectacle: Hero tells one assassination three times and recolours the whole palette for each version. In between, To Live takes a family through four decades of Chinese history and lets the losses accumulate without comment.
Signature
- Colour used structurally, keyed to a version of events or a state of power.
- Enclosed households as a model of the state.
- Wide, symmetrical staging of massed figures.
- Twentieth-century Chinese history borne by one family.
fit
Lineage
Earlier films these works draw on, and the films they went on to shape — each link checked to name a film that actually came first.