The Curse of the Golden Flower

Every now and then you come across a film that you realize is in some respects ‘beyond you’, not because you can’t understand it but because it draws on a culture that is so different from your own that you become conscious you are watching something that is both significant and alien at the same time.

The Curse of the Golden Flower challenges movie preconceptions, not just because it draws heavily on Asian sensibilities, but because it cuts dramatically across western cultural norms. In modern Australian society we seem to accept without question that if the world doesn’t please us we have the right to remake it in our own image. This film doesn’t reject our ability to choose our own way, but it will not let its characters lay aside the laws that govern the universe.

Curse of the Golden Flower is brought to the big screen by the same team that produced recent martial arts epics like Hero and House of Flying Daggers. As a result it contains all of the colour and vibrancy you’ve come to expect from director Zhang Yimou and DOP Zhao Xiadong – not to mention a new range of cutting edge wire-fighting techniques. Just as present, though, is the tragic tension between duty and love that characterizes the Chinese Wuxsia style or ‘swordplay and chivalry’ film genre.

Set in Zhang’s favourite historical period, the Tang dynasty (c. 10th century AD), The Curse of the Golden Flower uncovers the intrigues that fill the personal household of the Emperor of China. Making magnificent use of Beijing’s actual Forbidden City, it unveils a world controlled by the strictest formality, regulating everything from meals and meetings to the personal relationships of the Imperial family. The Emperor (Chow Yun Fat) is a stoney figure who rules his wife and three sons as strictly as he does the empire. On the surface, their ritualized relationship is perfection; underneath, fear, resentment and hatred mark every member.

The plot has too many twists to go into here, but it centres ironically on the fast approaching Chrysanthemum Festival, a time for honouring the family and ancestors, and driving away evil spirits. By contrast, the emperor is engaged in a silent war with his empress which is likely to result in open rebellion. The moral struggle of the film finds its focus in Prince Jai (Jay Chou) who is torn between the desire to save and serve both parents. “Whatever the circumstances, he is still my father and my emperor,” he tells the empress.

The Curse of the Golden Flower centres on the idea that there are laws which bind heaven and earth together. They may be natural (the rising of the moon), traditional (the ceremonies that guard access to the palace), filial (the respect due a parent) or political (the power of a superior force). Each of these restrictions is as real and binding as the gravity that holds us to the world we inhabit. We may, as individuals, choose to negotiate these laws, but they cannot be broken with impunity. Unlike the western film that would have every situation bend before a couple’s love, this Chinese drama holds its characters responsible for their choices.

The determination to link consequences with actions is probably the most attractive and disturbing aspect of The Curse of the Golden Flower. Characters may suffer for their choices but at least they don’t pretend that they were unexpected. That, however, is the hypocrisy that often resides at the heart of many of our modern cinema epics and, sadly, at the centre of the human soul. As the credits rolled up on Zhang’s latest epic I found myself desperately wanting a different outcome to the film, but I couldn’t deny its reality. The problem with the western world is that we have become too wed to primacy of our own desires and the pretense that any frustration of these is interpreted amounts to an injustice. At the end of time, when all human desires are accounted for before the throne of God, we are likely to witness many claims that a human being has the right to both choose and avoid the consequences of their choices. But wishing that the world was otherwise will not make it so.

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