Review of Raised the Red Lantern / 大红灯笼高高挂, directed by Zhang Yimou

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

About a year ago (at the time of typing this) I quit my job as a professional film critic to explore what was out there in the world when it came to publishing about the movies and books I wanted to see, not just what was popular in the moment. Digital media and working within it can be fun and all, but it can be grinding when you’re just chasing after all the latest trends and clicks for SEO.

I started this blog four years ago, during the pandemic, but never really took it seriously beyond the occasional post here and there about what I was up to. In 2023 I began to realize the impact this blog was having on me, and other people were reaching out about reading it, so I expanded. Once I quit my job, I decided to focus on the blog more while job hunting, as I do make a few pennies here and there from the display ads on the screen.

Regardless, this is how we got here today! Today’s blog post is dedicated to a movie I first encountered when I was an undergraduate at the Fashion Institute of Technology. As a part of the honors program, we had to pick an honors class every semester. I signed up for Chinese cinema with my class at the time, and we watched Raise the Red Lantern early on in the semester.

I’m slowly returning to movies from when I was younger to see how my thoughts have changed throughout the years, and this was one of the movies I was thinking about a lot recently. Asian cinema has largely been my focus, with an emphasis on Korean cinema, but I’ve definitely been neglecting Chinese cinema lately and want to go back into it more.

So let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction, as I know it’s not what people are here for.

In 1920s China, a young woman becomes a man’s fourth wife, learning how difficult it can make her life.

This film is set in a very specific period of Chinese history: Republican Chinese, which is right after the fall of the dynasty system and two decades before the Civil War that led to the communist takeover. Gong Li portrays Songlian, who is 19, and is forced to marry into the Chen family after the death of her father.

Despite being educated, her family now has no money, so she doesn’t really have a choice about what happens to her. When she arrives, we learn she is the fourth wife of Master Chen, and each wife gets their own room in the compound (which is often illuminated by red, especially with red lanterns). When she first arrives, she’s treated well, but Songlian quickly learns that she’s being treated differently.

Every night the master picks a wife to spend the night with, and when he does that, the wife picked gets the same treatment Songlian saw when she first arrived. She is now the youngest, with the first wife being the same age as Master Chen, having a son, and the second wife seems to be a friend, not a foe.

The third wife is jealous that someone younger has come in and caught the master’s eye, but when Songlian actually meets her, the third wife, Meishan, warns her about the second wife and says that in order for Songlian to remain favored, she should have a son with Master Chen. It also doesn’t help that Songlian’s own servant doesn’t seem to like her, and has her own romance flings with the master, too.

But it’s through her servant one day that Songlian learns the second wife was the one who tried to curse her, and Songlian makes the decision to pretend to be pregnant. The master begins coming to her more because of that, but Songlian hopes she actually becomes pregnant in the process. The second wife, working with her servant, manages to snag some of Songlian’s period underwear and summons the Chen’s physician.

The physician looks Songlian over and declares her to not be pregnant, and Master Chen makes an order to cover all of her lanterns with black bags. This angers her, and she exposes her servant for having red lanterns in her room, and the servant is punished by being forced to kneel in the snow. She eventually dies from this, but Songlian contemplates suicide back in the compound.

It’s her twentieth birthday when her servant passes away, and when she drinks herself to oblivion, she tells the second wife that Meishan went to the physician, who is her lover. The second wife exposes Meishan for this, and Meishan is taken to the room of death. Songlian loses it after this and begins calling everyone in the compound a murderer.

She even says it to Master Chen, who tells her she saw nothing. Songlian goes to light all of the lanterns in Meishan’s room and plays her phonograph, freaking the servants out. A time jump happens: summer arrives, and a fifth mistress has arrived at the compound.

As she gets her feet massaged, she asks who Songlian is, as she’s wandering the courtyard in schoolgirl clothes. The servant tells her that she is the fourth mistress, and she went insane.

Overall Thoughts

This is such a rich, gorgeous movie to watch on a visual level. When you look the film up, you’re going to see stills of the red lanterns around the compound, especially the ones located inside of Songlian’s room. It makes for quite the cinematic experience, and they also serve as a layered metaphor for the women and what they face in the compound.

It’s not the happiest movie, but if you think about it in hindsight and know your Chinese women’s history, it wasn’t the happiest time for poorer women. When they’re chained to a rich man like this, they can do whatever they want to the women and not face any consequences because of their social status.

Regardless, this is a must watch in Chinese cinema, especially if you want to go and learn more about this period of filmmaking. All of the nineties filmmakers have such distinct visual styles and modes of storytelling, and I do quite like Zhang’s earlier works especially. Jia Zhangke is also someone who’s work I never fail to pick up.

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