Red Sorghum
Encyclopedia
Red Sorghum is a 1987 Chinese film
about a young woman's life working on a distillery for sorghum liquor
. It is based on a novel by Mo Yan
.
The film marked the directorial debut of internationally acclaimed filmmaker Zhang Yimou
, and the acting debut of film star Gong Li
. With its lush and lusty portrayal of peasant life, it immediately vaulted Zhang to the forefront of the Fifth Generation directors.
during the Second Sino-Japanese War
. It is narrated from the point of view of the protagonist’s grandson, who reminisces about his grandmother, Jiu'er. She was a poor girl who was sent by her parents into a pre-arranged marriage with an older man. This man, Li Datou, who owned a distillery, suffered from leprosy
.
As her wedding party crosses a field of sorghum, they are attacked by a bandit with a pistol. The hired sedan carrier fights off the assailant and a series of subtly flirtatious looks are exchanged. After she reaches the winery, the man disappears. He returns to the screen while Jiu'er is returning from her parents' house. We see him wearing the same mask as the man who attacked them three days before. He kidnaps Jiu'er and after a short chase, reveals his identity. He then clears some sorghum and they make love.
After the leper was mysteriously murdered, the young widow takes over the distillery, which has fallen on hard times. She inspires the workers to take new pride in their wine, and once again meets the man who saved her life and then deflowered her. He arrives drunk and tries to claim her, telling the distillery workers how he deflowered her and that he is going to sleep in her room, but she tosses him out and he makes a fool of himself in his drunken rudeness. He sleeps in a liquor vat for three days, while the bandits kidnapped Jiu'er and asked for ransom, which the distillery workers paid. The bandits did not rape her because she told them she had slept with her deceased husband, the leper.
Later, the man who deflowered her comes back again, when they make the first batch of liquor. He takes four vats of the liquor and urinates in them, shocking the employees. He meant it to anger Jiu'er, but somehow his urine makes the liquor taste better than ever before. The longtime distiller, Luohan, leaves in disgust, presumably because of her affair with the hired bearer and the resultant bastard
son, the narrator's father.
The style of the film shifts from fable to realism when the War begins and the Imperial Japanese Army
troops invade the area. The Japanese soldiers order forced laborers to flatten the sorghum fields. The widow Jiu'er and the winery workers are among the forced laborers. They then order a butcher to skin the bandit alive. The butcher resists, but is given a choice of death or skinning, as a reminder to the laborers not to resist. The butcher is near to doing it, and attempts to attack a Japanese soldier. He is machine gunned, and the butcher assistant is given the task, to skin Luohan, the distillery worker, lest he himself be skinned. He does the skinning, and loses his mind. The narrator then identifies many atrocities of the Japanese
during the war and notes Luohan as a member of the Communist
guerrilla resistance.
They then have a liquor tasting ritual where they celebrate Luohan and his liquor, where Jiu'er recommends the distillery workers avenge his death. All of the distillery workers toast with the liquor, as does Jiu'er's son, the narrator's father, with the same song that Luohan sung at other rituals. In the early dawn, they set an ambush and take liquor with them to use as a fire bomb, which is urinated in by Jiu'er's son. Later, the boy runs back to the distillery and tells his mother the men are hungry. She arrives in time to be machine-gunned by the Japanese. The ambush is a noble disaster, with cannons misfiring and killing some of the ambushers but their homemade liquor grenades destroy the Japanese trucks and troops, as well as most of the distillers. In the end, there is nothing but scenes of death, with the narrator's grandfather and father observing a red eclipse
symbolic of the death and destruction and the red color of the liquor. The narrator's father is left chanting a prayer for his mother to rise to heaven at the close of the film.
(1999), Red Sorghum is narrated
by the main characters' grandson, but Red Sorghum lacks the flashback framing device of The Road Home (the viewer never sees the narrator).
The cinematography by cinematographer
Gu Changwei
makes use of rich, intense colors. Zhang himself was a cinematographer prior to his directorial debut, and worked closely with Gu.
Cinema of China
The Chinese-language cinema has three distinct historical threads: Cinema of Hong Kong, Cinema of China, and Cinema of Taiwan. Since 1949 the cinema of mainland China has operated under restrictions imposed by the Communist Party of China's State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television and...
about a young woman's life working on a distillery for sorghum liquor
Kaoliang
Kaoliang jiu is a strong distilled liquor, made from fermented sorghum . It is made and sold in both mainland China and Taiwan, and also popular in Korea, where it is called goryangju...
. It is based on a novel by Mo Yan
Mo Yan
Mo Yan is a modern Chinese author, described as "one of the most famous, oft-banned and widely pirated of all Chinese writers". He is known in the West for two of his novels which were the basis of the film Red Sorghum. He has been referred to as the Chinese answer to Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller...
.
The film marked the directorial debut of internationally acclaimed filmmaker Zhang Yimou
Zhang Yimou
Zhang Yimou is a Chinese film director, producer, writer and actor, and former cinematographer. He is counted amongst the Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers, having made his directorial debut in 1987 with Red Sorghum....
, and the acting debut of film star Gong Li
Gong Li
Gong Li is a Chinese film actress. Gong first came into international prominence through close collaboration with Chinese director Zhang Yimou and is credited with helping to bring Chinese cinema to Europe and the United States....
. With its lush and lusty portrayal of peasant life, it immediately vaulted Zhang to the forefront of the Fifth Generation directors.
Synopsis
The film takes place in a rural village in China's eastern province of ShandongShandong
' is a Province located on the eastern coast of the People's Republic of China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history from the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River and served as a pivotal cultural and religious site for Taoism, Chinese...
during the Second Sino-Japanese War
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War was a military conflict fought primarily between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. From 1937 to 1941, China fought Japan with some economic help from Germany , the Soviet Union and the United States...
. It is narrated from the point of view of the protagonist’s grandson, who reminisces about his grandmother, Jiu'er. She was a poor girl who was sent by her parents into a pre-arranged marriage with an older man. This man, Li Datou, who owned a distillery, suffered from leprosy
Leprosy
Leprosy or Hansen's disease is a chronic disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. Named after physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen, leprosy is primarily a granulomatous disease of the peripheral nerves and mucosa of the upper respiratory tract; skin lesions...
.
As her wedding party crosses a field of sorghum, they are attacked by a bandit with a pistol. The hired sedan carrier fights off the assailant and a series of subtly flirtatious looks are exchanged. After she reaches the winery, the man disappears. He returns to the screen while Jiu'er is returning from her parents' house. We see him wearing the same mask as the man who attacked them three days before. He kidnaps Jiu'er and after a short chase, reveals his identity. He then clears some sorghum and they make love.
After the leper was mysteriously murdered, the young widow takes over the distillery, which has fallen on hard times. She inspires the workers to take new pride in their wine, and once again meets the man who saved her life and then deflowered her. He arrives drunk and tries to claim her, telling the distillery workers how he deflowered her and that he is going to sleep in her room, but she tosses him out and he makes a fool of himself in his drunken rudeness. He sleeps in a liquor vat for three days, while the bandits kidnapped Jiu'er and asked for ransom, which the distillery workers paid. The bandits did not rape her because she told them she had slept with her deceased husband, the leper.
Later, the man who deflowered her comes back again, when they make the first batch of liquor. He takes four vats of the liquor and urinates in them, shocking the employees. He meant it to anger Jiu'er, but somehow his urine makes the liquor taste better than ever before. The longtime distiller, Luohan, leaves in disgust, presumably because of her affair with the hired bearer and the resultant bastard
Legitimacy (law)
At common law, legitimacy is the status of a child who is born to parents who are legally married to one another; and of a child who is born shortly after the parents' divorce. In canon and in civil law, the offspring of putative marriages have been considered legitimate children...
son, the narrator's father.
The style of the film shifts from fable to realism when the War begins and the Imperial Japanese Army
Imperial Japanese Army
-Foundation:During the Meiji Restoration, the military forces loyal to the Emperor were samurai drawn primarily from the loyalist feudal domains of Satsuma and Chōshū...
troops invade the area. The Japanese soldiers order forced laborers to flatten the sorghum fields. The widow Jiu'er and the winery workers are among the forced laborers. They then order a butcher to skin the bandit alive. The butcher resists, but is given a choice of death or skinning, as a reminder to the laborers not to resist. The butcher is near to doing it, and attempts to attack a Japanese soldier. He is machine gunned, and the butcher assistant is given the task, to skin Luohan, the distillery worker, lest he himself be skinned. He does the skinning, and loses his mind. The narrator then identifies many atrocities of the Japanese
Japanese war crimes
Japanese war crimes occurred during the period of Japanese imperialism, primarily during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. Some of the incidents have also been described as an Asian Holocaust and Japanese war atrocities...
during the war and notes Luohan as a member of the Communist
Communist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
guerrilla resistance.
They then have a liquor tasting ritual where they celebrate Luohan and his liquor, where Jiu'er recommends the distillery workers avenge his death. All of the distillery workers toast with the liquor, as does Jiu'er's son, the narrator's father, with the same song that Luohan sung at other rituals. In the early dawn, they set an ambush and take liquor with them to use as a fire bomb, which is urinated in by Jiu'er's son. Later, the boy runs back to the distillery and tells his mother the men are hungry. She arrives in time to be machine-gunned by the Japanese. The ambush is a noble disaster, with cannons misfiring and killing some of the ambushers but their homemade liquor grenades destroy the Japanese trucks and troops, as well as most of the distillers. In the end, there is nothing but scenes of death, with the narrator's grandfather and father observing a red eclipse
Eclipse
An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object is temporarily obscured, either by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer...
symbolic of the death and destruction and the red color of the liquor. The narrator's father is left chanting a prayer for his mother to rise to heaven at the close of the film.
Style
Like Zhang's later film, The Road HomeThe Road Home (1999 film)
The Road Home is a 2000 Chinese romantic drama film directed by Zhang Yimou. It also marked the cinematic debut of the Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi...
(1999), Red Sorghum is narrated
Narrator
A narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...
by the main characters' grandson, but Red Sorghum lacks the flashback framing device of The Road Home (the viewer never sees the narrator).
The cinematography by cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
Gu Changwei
Gu Changwei
Gu Changwei is a Chinese cinematographer and film director. Gu was born in Xi'an, Shaanxi in the People's Republic of China. Gu is considered one of the major Chinese cinematographers working today.-Career:...
makes use of rich, intense colors. Zhang himself was a cinematographer prior to his directorial debut, and worked closely with Gu.
Reception
Upon its release, Red Sorghum garnered international acclaim, most notably winning the coveted Golden Bear at the 1988 Berlin International Film Festival.Awards
- 38th Berlin International Film Festival38th Berlin International Film FestivalThe 38th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from February 12 to 23, 1988.-Jury:* Guglielmo Biraghi * Ellen Burstyn* Heiner Carow* Eberhard Junkersdorf* Tom Luddy* Heinz Rathsack* Daniel Schmid* Andrei Smirnov...
, 19881988 in film-Top grossing films :- Awards :Academy Awards:* Act of Piracy* Action Jackson, starring Carl Weathers, Craig T. Nelson, Vanity, Sharon Stone* The Adventures of Baron Munchausen* Akira* Alice...
- Golden BearGolden BearAccording to legend, the Golden Bear was a large golden Ursus arctos. Members of the Ursus arctos species can reach masses of . The Grizzly Bear and the Kodiak Bear are North American subspecies of the Brown Bear....
Award
- Golden Bear
- Hundred Flowers AwardsHundred Flowers AwardsThe People's Hundred Flowers Film Festival or Hundred Flowers Awards, equivalent the China's Golden Globes, are considered, together with the Golden Rooster Awards, the most prestigious film awards in China...
, 19881988 in film-Top grossing films :- Awards :Academy Awards:* Act of Piracy* Action Jackson, starring Carl Weathers, Craig T. Nelson, Vanity, Sharon Stone* The Adventures of Baron Munchausen* Akira* Alice...
- Best Feature
- Golden Rooster AwardsGolden Rooster AwardsChina Golden Rooster Film Festival also known as Golden Rooster Awards are the most prestigious awards in film given in mainland China, equivalent the China's Academy Awards. The awards are given annually, beginning in 1981. The name of the award came from the year of the Rooster in 1981...
, 19881988 in film-Top grossing films :- Awards :Academy Awards:* Act of Piracy* Action Jackson, starring Carl Weathers, Craig T. Nelson, Vanity, Sharon Stone* The Adventures of Baron Munchausen* Akira* Alice...
- Best Feature
- Best Cinematography - Gu ChangweiGu ChangweiGu Changwei is a Chinese cinematographer and film director. Gu was born in Xi'an, Shaanxi in the People's Republic of China. Gu is considered one of the major Chinese cinematographers working today.-Career:...
- Best Sound
- Best Music - Zhao JipingZhao JipingZhao Jiping is a Chinese composer from Shaanxi. He is best known for his film scores for the Fifth Generation Chinese director Zhang Yimou.Zhao studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing.-Film scores:...
- Best Director - Zhang Yimou (nominated)
- Best Actor - Jiang WenJiang WenJiang Wen is a Chinese film actor and director. As a director, he is sometimes grouped with the "sixth generation" that emerged in the 1990s. Jiang is also well known internationally as an actor, having starred with Gong Li in Zhang Yimou's debut film Red Sorghum...
(nominated) - Best Art Direction - Yang Gang (nominated)
- Zimbabwe International Film FestivalZimbabwe International Film FestivalThe Zimbabwe International Film Festival is an annual ten day film festival held in Zimbabwe in August or September. It is a non-profit organisation. The festival is a non-political competitive platform that provides a showcase of feature films, documentary films and short films, as well as...
, 19881988 in film-Top grossing films :- Awards :Academy Awards:* Act of Piracy* Action Jackson, starring Carl Weathers, Craig T. Nelson, Vanity, Sharon Stone* The Adventures of Baron Munchausen* Akira* Alice...
- Best Picture
- Best Director - Zhang Yimou
- Best Artistic Achievement
- Sydney Film FestivalSydney Film FestivalThe Sydney Film Festival is an annual film festival held in the Australian city of Sydney and is held over 12 days in June. The competitive film festival draws international and local attention, with films being showcased in several venues across the city centre and includes features,...
, 19881988 in film-Top grossing films :- Awards :Academy Awards:* Act of Piracy* Action Jackson, starring Carl Weathers, Craig T. Nelson, Vanity, Sharon Stone* The Adventures of Baron Munchausen* Akira* Alice...
- Film Critics Award
- Brussels International Film Festival, 19891989 in film-Events:* Batman is released on June 23, and goes on to gross over $410 million worldwide.* Actress Kim Basinger and her brother Mick purchase Braselton, Georgia, for $20 million...
- Belgian French Radio Young Jury Award for Best Picture
- Montreal International Film Festival, 19891989 in film-Events:* Batman is released on June 23, and goes on to gross over $410 million worldwide.* Actress Kim Basinger and her brother Mick purchase Braselton, Georgia, for $20 million...
- Silver Panda
- Hong Kong International Film FestivalHong Kong International Film FestivalThe Hong Kong International Film Festival is a platform for filmmakers, film professionals and filmgoers from all over the world to launch and experience new film work. There are seminars, conferences, exhibitions, and parties celebrating the festival community...
, 19891989 in film-Events:* Batman is released on June 23, and goes on to gross over $410 million worldwide.* Actress Kim Basinger and her brother Mick purchase Braselton, Georgia, for $20 million...
- Top Ten Chinese Language Films
- German Democratic Republic Filmmakers Award, 19901990 in filmThe year 1990 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* CGI technique is expanded with motion capture for CGI characters, used in Total Recall .* The first digitally-manipulated matte painting is used, in Die Hard 2....
- Annual Award
- Cuba Film Festival, 19901990 in filmThe year 1990 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* CGI technique is expanded with motion capture for CGI characters, used in Total Recall .* The first digitally-manipulated matte painting is used, in Die Hard 2....
- Best Feature Film
External links
- Red Sorghum at the Chinese Movie Database