Red Sorghum is a film with some incredible strengths as well as some undeniable weaknesses. We’ll need first to examine the historical context in which this film was made to understand why those strengths and weaknesses exist.

Historical Context: The director of Red Sorghum, Zhang Yimou, was trained at the Beijing Film Academy and was part of the first graduating class after the reopening of the Academy following the Cultural Revolution. He belongs to the group of Chinese filmmakers known as the “Fifth Generation.” Red Sorghum represented the first major international success for this group and was the first modern Chinese film released commercially in the United States. Although more than 150 films are produced each year in mainland China, many are propaganda films and many other are of poor quality. When the film renaissance began in China in the 1980’s, Xi’an Film Studio was the only studio in the country attempting to make films of international quality or interest. Film artistry remained under close state control and censorship. Those writers and directors wanting to make any kind of creative statement found themselves resorting mainly to vague, symbolic, or metaphorical themes, in order to evade red-penciling or suppression, which explains some of the characteristics of Red Sorghum as a film. Another thing worth noting is that Zhang Yimou was trained mainly in cinematography and worked in that capacity on films such as Yellow Earth before moving into the director’s chair. His mastery of cinematography is highly evident in Red Sorghum as well as in some subsequent highly successful films, such as Ju Dou (1989) and Raise the Red Lantern (1991), both of which where nominated for Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Film category.

The Story: Red Sorghum is set in northeast China in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The film begins with an unidentified narrator explaining that this story is about his grandmother and grandfather and that it may well be partly true and partly family legend. His grandmother was a girl from a poor family who was called “Nine” (Gong Li) because she was the ninth child and was born on the ninth day of the ninth month of the year. As the tale begins, she has just been sold into an arranged marriage to a much older man in exchange for a mule. Her husband-to-be owns a vineyard and distilling factory, but is also a leper. The wealthy distiller has sent a palanquin and a phalanx of carriers to transport Nine to her new home. Nine has secretly smuggled a pair of scissors under her blouse in case she decides that death is preferable to consummation of this forced marriage.

In one of the most entertaining scenes of the film, the bearers partake in an age-old Chinese hazing-of-the-bride ritual. As they travel, they boisterously sing a raucous and vulgar song and kick up dirt, while jostling the sedan chair vigorously, in a kind of crude symbolic rehearsal of wedding night consummation. Nine, near her wit’s end from both nausea and anguish, breaks into sobbing. Hearing this, the leader of the group of carriers, Yu (Jiang Weng), peeks into the palanquin and is struck by the occupant’s simple beauty. Taking pity, he instructs the escort team to transport her in a more sober and ceremonial manner. They soon reach the fields of sorghum that provide their livelihood. Sorghum, a corn-like plant with green and red stalks, is used to make a bright red wine, called Red Sorghum Wine.

As they pass amidst the tall sorghum plants, their party is attacked by a bandit, who identifies himself as Sanpao, an infamous and highly-feared bandit who operates in the area. After robbing the feckless party of bearers, the bandit reveals his intention to rape the bride-to-be. Yu is inspired to lead the carriers in subduing the bandit, who is then quickly stomped to death. They discover, on removing his mask, that he was not the real Sanpao, but a mere impostor. Nine is grateful to Yu for his bravery in saving her and they exchange subtle looks of mutual yearning.

The bridal party completes the journey to the distillery. One way or another, the leper husband, whom we never see, is unable to consummate the marriage and Nine finds her new life at least tolerable. Soon, she is allowed to return home to visit her parents. Passing through the field of sorghum, she is again attacked by a masked bandit. This time there is no escape and she is carried off into the Sorghum field. The abductor clears a space in the field, lays down a bed of sorghum plants, and rapes Nine. Nine puts up little resistance, apparently being somewhat aroused by her assailant. Perhaps she guessed it was Yu, as soon proves to be the case when he removes his mask. We are informed by the narrator that his father was thus conceived in the sorghum field.

At home, Nine denounces her father for exchanging her, in effect, for a mule, dismisses his protestations, and swears never to see him again. When she returns to the distillery, she learns that her husband has been murdered mysteriously. We are left to wonder if it is Yu who provided this additional service for Nine. Nine now inherits her husband’s property. Since women in China at that time were not viewed as competent in matters of business or agriculture, the workers prepare to leave to seek livelihood elsewhere. Nine asks them to give her a chance to prove that together they can continue the distillery successfully. She demonstrates her willingness to pitch in and work like a man herself and wins over the kindly foreman, Luohan (Teng Ru-Jun), by her enthusiasm. The rest follow suit. She asks them to call her simply “Mistress.”

We now observe the operation of the distillery in great detail and vivid color. Yu, who has been rejected by Nine because of his unreliability, shows up drunk and insolent. He insults Nine and even pees in one of the vats of wine. Amazingly, it turns out that the addition of the urine proves to be precisely the necessary catalyst to yield the best batch of sorghum wine yet. Yu sweeps Nine up in his strong arms and lays claim to a place beside her in the house. Their son is born and begins to grow strong.

The film now jumps ahead nine years and undergoes a major change in tone. The Japanese have invaded China, just before the opening of World War II. The local Japanese occupiers treat the Chinese cruelly and use them as forced labor. Their present assignment is to stomp the sorghum fields to the ground in preparation for construction of a highway. Others are assigned the task of preparing food for the Japanese soldiers. The butchering of an ox is shown in realistic detail. A revolt by some of the forced laborers is brutally put down and, to set an example, the Japanese commander orders the butcher to flay two of the captives alive.

By Nine’s encouragement, a group of her workers undertake a more carefully planned attack on the truck carrying the Japanese soldiers. I’ll leave the outcome of this act of sabotage for readers to discover for themselves. The film ends with a solar eclipse occurring, which imparts a rich red hue to the sorghum plants.

Strengths: The characteristic of this film that stands out about all others is its visual quality. Gorgeous cinematography is arguably Zhang Yimou’s hallmark characteristic as a filmmaker and that is nowhere more evident than in Red Sorghum. When Hollywood abandoned Technicolor in favor of faster and easier filming methods, much of the old Technicolor processing equipment was sold to China. The result is a richness of palette seldom seen in modern Hollywood films. Frame after frame is splashed with vivid hues, with the clear emphasis, in this film, on red. Red Sorghum is very nearly an ode to red. The cinematography is rich in content as well, including many sweeping landscapes, swishing sorghum, and the fascinating machinery of the distillery. This film is at its very best in the scenes where details of ordinary life are presented with realism and in rich color. The musical score nicely complements the cinematography. The raucous songs are primal and invigorating – as vivid in their own way as the pictures.

Another creative aspect of this film is its integration of a fairy-tale quality with stark realism. Much of the story prior to the invasion of the Japanese has the feel of a fable, yet the realism of the wine-making, food preparation, and love-making scenes contrasts sharply with the mythical quality.

Red Sorghum is rich in symbolism. Some critics criticize the film as heavy-handed or too obvious in its use of symbolism, but their specifics typically indicate that they reject the examples of symbolism mainly when they are seen by that reviewer as serving a propaganda purpose. The difference between propaganda and message is largely in the eyes of the beholder. The color red, in this film, is a multidimensional symbol, representing, at a minimum, the sorghum wine, blood, Communism, and the bride’s virginity.

Nine can be seen as epitomizing collectivism. She is of poor background and, when she assumes control, she asks the workers to “join with her” as partners to keep their joint livelihood intact. After the death of her husband, the distillery workers disinfect the leper’s quarters with wine, which can be interpreted as expunging the feudal patriarchal system by which they have been exploited for generations. We can also see political overtones in her husband being a leper and in his inability to consummate his marriage with Nine.

Red Sorghum exudes overt, raw masculinity. Other than Nine, all the main characters are male. They appear, in a sense, as primitives – sweaty and dusty, with scantily clothed muscular bodies. The level of unbridled testosterone is especially palpable in the scene where the team of half-naked carriers are jostling the bride. When Nine comes into the distillery, they even have to quickly alert one another so that they can make themselves decent. There is a virility element as well, in the effect that Yu’s urination has in perfecting the wine. The workers are hard drinkers and sing hearty drinking songs. It is no accident that the story is set in the rugged Northeastern part of China, which is reminiscent in some respects to the American wild west, where men drink hard, love hard, and kill hard in a rugged, untamed terrain. It is a world in which men take what they want without asking, a world both instinctual and corrupt. The sense of vitality that one feels in the world depicted in Red Sorghum contrasts sharply with the cultured, refined, cerebral, and somewhat effeminate image of the old imperial China. The distillery workers celebrate the production of their first batch of wine under the new collective system with a drinking song, the last two lines of which are “If you drink our wine, you won’t kow-tow to the emperor.” This is communist China searching for its primal, pre-imperial folk roots. A kind of back to basics emphasis on eating, drinking, voiding, sex, and rearing children.

The performances by the two leads are fully commendable. Jiang Weng is stocky, bald and barrel-chested and provides the main comic relief as Yu. Gong Li is lovely but also impresses us with her self-assurance and independence. As Nine, she must drink and work like man and still be sensuous and sexy in the love scenes.

Weaknesses: Unfortunately, the considerable strengths just enumerated are offset in part by some troublesome weakness. The script is weak in several respects. Until the invasion of the Japanese, there is a finely wrought balance between humor and drama and between the fable quality and realism. Then, unconvincingly, the latter part of the film shifts entirely into humorless realism. There is a jolting incompatibility in the tone of the first two-thirds of the film and the last third. The level of disturbing violence in the last third of the film, especially during a horrifying torture scene, was more than I like to suffer in watching a film, especially when nothing in the first two-thirds has remotely prepared one for it.

Nothing very much is revealed about the motivations of most of the characters or their psychology in general. The driving forces, in this film, are entirely sociologic and not at all psychological. These aren’t fully drawn people by the standards of Western film. Whether this relates to the diminished emphasis on individuality in a communist system or whether it’s simply a failure in the script, I can’t be certain. It either case, it diminishes our interest in the characters. The weaknesses in character development also constrain what the actors and actresses can accomplish with the parts.

The Bottom Line: Red Sorghum was hailed as the beginning of a renaissance in Chinese film when it was released in 1988. It won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival, the Golden Hugo Award at the Chicago International Film Festival, and the Best Foreign Film recognition at the 1990 New York Film Festival. Red Sorghum is a visually sumptuous film, rich in symbolism, both humorous and erotic in its first two-thirds, but hyper-violent and jarringly inconsistent in tone in its last third. I said once in another review that cinematography alone can never save for me a film with a poor story line. This film comes closer than any other to making me eat those words. Its virtues, however, include somewhat more than just its magnificent cinematography and, taken together, those virtues make this film worth a four-star recommendation despite the weaknesses in script and character development.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan:

Chungking Express
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Eat Drink Man Woman
The Emperor and the Assassin
Fallen Angels
Farewell My Concubine
Hero
In the Mood for Love
Raise the Red Lantern
Road Home
Shanghai Triad
The Story of Qiu Ju
Temptress Moon
Together
To Live
What Time is it There?
The Women From the Lake of Scented Souls
Yi Yi

Recommended:
Yes

Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age