The beating heart of the 1993 film, Farewell My Concubine, owes its continuous rhythm to a kind of untouchable glory and melancholy. From start to finish, this is a movie that invades your emotional core, and you have little choice but to be swept up in the varying velocity of human desires.
Chinese film director, Chen Kaige, crash landed with Farewell My Concubine in the midst of a cinematic revolution for the country. And I am talking internationally, across the world, Chinese cinema was breaking new ground and competing at festivals and awards events. Also widely known by 1993, filmmaker Zhang Yimou, and actress Gong Li, had already made three breathtaking films together: Red Sorghum, Raise The Red Lantern and The Story of Qiu Ju.
Such a pivotal period for film in China in the early nineties, Farewell My Concubine received the Palme d’Or – sharing the prize with Jane Campion’s The Piano – as well as the FIPRESCI Prix. It was history in the making for both parties. Farewell My Concubine would go on to become one of the very best and most popular non-English language film of 1993. A Golden Globe and a BAFTA would follow for Best Foreign Language Film. Though the Academy Award, in a fist-clenchingly excellent year in the category, would go to the Spanish film, Belle Epoque.
No matter. Farewell My Concubine remains a thoroughly sweeping drama, layered with contrasting flavours of the human spirit. But physically, too, with vivid production design, costumes and cinematography, the film absorbs every ounce of your attention. Adapted from the 1985 novel by Lilian Lee, the film spans an incredible 50 years of Chinese history in turmoil.
Although heavy themes surrounding political chaos and social fragmentation, Farewell My Concubine will be remembered for its portrayal of two men. And a woman. And the extraordinary see-saw of fear and devotion between longtime friends and potential lovers. That is, the focus of two boys who grow up participating in a troupe, performing in Peking operas.
Beginning in 1924, the story dwells on the discoveries of being a child, and also the tormenting toughness of the school training. Boys act out in retaliation, sometimes to angrily retort, sometimes out of loyalty, and are severely beaten for their efforts. Those opening sequences are harrowing, for sure, but paint a brutally real way of life. Later, when the film erupts into vibrant colours, these troubles might seem all the more prominent.
One of the boys is developed to play female roles in the shows, and much later as adults when they become Peking opera stars. Those lines, “I am by nature a boy”, that keep resurfacing, almost serve to cement the genderless trope of such a tale. Yes, Farewell My Concubine digs into the state of repression, and that this might be a homosexual bond, but none of this is labeled as gospel.
Both men, Laizi and Shitou, rely on each other in different ways. They pine for better days, they bicker and fall out. And with the arrival of Juxian, a probing courtesan, friction will certainly grow. The complex relationship between these three characters is pushed to the boundaries. The error of their ways leads to further feuds, irreversible loss, and even opium addiction.
Farewell My Concubine is heavy going. But it engages you on so many levels, somehow surrounded by the comfort of sadness. Constantly, as you watch, your empathy for these characters fluctuates. Through their good fortune, and right slap-bang in the middle of their downtrodden mishaps.
So many great examples of enduring storytelling. A mother, impoverished and desperate, chops off her son’s extra finger so that he can attend school. A school which practices unflinching punishment in these boys. During a scuffle on stage, a pregnant woman intervenes. You fear the worst, and it can be exhausting.
Through Japanese invasion, through the communist revolution, through hardships you just have to accepts as a crucial part of China’s history. Farewell My Concubine is a ravishing, gruelling portrait of such an era. And in its depiction of conformism and artistic yearning, between Laizi and Shitou, is pretty mesmerising.
The emotive passionate performances of Cheng Dieyi and Leslie Cheung clearly give everything they have. Cheung in particular, somehow managing to show a lingering pain, even behind the radiant face paint. Of course, given the integral thorn her character plays, Gong Li is just perfect. The raw acting from those children in the opening act, too, is outstanding.
Add to that the aforementioned art direction, costume design, and that breathtaking cinematography. Elements so painstakingly immaculate, they deserve further recognition. Farewell My Concubine is Chen Kaige’s opus. And a marvelous peak in the bounce-back of Chinese cinema. A film so hefty, emotional, it may give you your own abandonment issues with its magnitude. Beautiful all the same.
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