Too much of everything

Strong and Moving!

Just perfect...

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Zhang Yimou directed "Raise the Red Lantern" in 1991. That film saw an impoverished young woman (Gong Li) forced to marry a nobleman with multiple wives. Slowly she loses both her mind and humanity, all in the name of financial necessity.Yimou's "Shanghai Triad" tells a similar tale. Also starring Gong Li, the film is set in 1930s Shanghai. Here a fourteen year old boy, Shuisheng, is forced to work for Bijou (Gong Li), a woman who is herself forced to work for Tang, a powerful crime lord. But whilst "Lantern" dealt with clear lines of exploitation, "Triad" is much more amorphous. Shuisheng, for example, finds himself beholden to Tang and Bijou, but also willingly gives himself to them. Likewise, Bijou may be a virtual prisoner and sex slave, but she also enjoys the perks of being Tang's mistress, and routinely uses her power to bully anyone she can, including Shuisheng."Shanghai Triad" belongs to the "gangster genre", but dodges all the genre's clichés and conventions. It, unusual for the genre, also focuses on women and children; the victims of the gang's hierarchal structure. The film then climaxes with a powerful final act in which Bijou reveals herself to have been working with a rival gang-lord to usurp Tang. Ostracized on remote island, she then meets a peasant child, a girl who will henceforth be groomed by Tang to replace Bijou. With sequences like this, "Triad" evokes the best of Shakespeare, Yimou watching as grand cycles repeat themselves, King's attempting to dethroning kings, and little boys and girls made coarse by violence."Shanghai Triad" isn't as good as Yimou's best films, but it boasts a powerful climax and Gongi Li in another touching role (she at times evokes Marlene Dietrichish). Yimou's aesthetic is customarily lush. This was the last of eight collaborations between he and Gong Li, most of which featured her as a victim of all-powerful patriarchal figures.7.9/10 – Worth one viewing.

One day you wake up wishing had a lot of things. You dream of luxury, plenty of everything, succulent foods, fine jewelry, luxury cars... and why not, live in a mansion. To achieve this, scores with a beautiful body and a pleasant voice to sing. And then, you attract a man who can bring things like you want... and as much you longed to have them, do not ask questions, but you know who you are provided by not acting with dignity, hurt many people and not treat you like you wish to do so. Suddenly you realize you're paying a high price... nothing, absolutely nothing. Because then you realize that things are worth very little, if a woman does not feel valued, respected and treated with affection. You realize, of little use for luxuries, if you're constantly round the fear and loneliness. You realize that, although now "have everything", you'd be willing to leave if you find someone you truly loved. Like so many women, this is the experience that goes Xiao Jingbao (Gong Li more fascinating than ever), a girl who also encouraged the dream of love, but that falls into the trap of material success and ends in the hands of a gang gangster who will give you all them learned to give. The story is seen from the perspective of a boy named Shusheng Tang, who joins the gang as a servant of the beautiful Xiao, induced by a uncle who expected out of poverty in which has so far lived. Frequent and well achieved subjective shots, put us at crucial moments in the boy's point of view, and with him witnessed the cruel world and weaknesses of the outlaw. Zhang Yimou shines with a flawless picture, a beautiful staging, and a careful pleasing soundtrack that includes songs, among which stands out, especially, the lullaby duet portraying Gong Li and Yang Qianquan girl who gets an emotional role as Ah Jiao, a being that sensitize the beautiful singer and will feel that life offers us wonderful things, but maybe for her are now too late.Once again, Yimou takes a woman as the center of the universe, and his deep nostalgia when he remembers, how the women lost so many dreams and hopes, by yielding to ambition. "SHANGHAI TRIAD" is the kind of movie that no girl should miss.

What always impresses me about Zhang Yimou's *Shanghai Triad* is how the two settings of the film -- the Thirties-era, glitzy nightclub milieu of the gangsters in Shanghai and the pastoral scene in the second half -- are used as a counterpoint to the drama unfolding before us. The settings are glamorous, mythical, beautiful; the people are not.The characters are, in fact, brutally ordinary. Even the ostensible hero of the piece, the 14-year-old boy who becomes the servant of chanteuse Gong Li, is not particularly remarkable: not intuitive, not very smart, and certainly not a winner. Ineffectual to the end, he ends up suspended upside-down like the famed Hanged Man in a deck of Tarot. The plot involving the Thirties-era Shanghai Mafia is mostly presented through the boys' eyes, with the result that the most "action-oriented" events, usually occurring off-screen, seem incoherent and, though violent and tragic, beside the point. The Boss's girlfriend Gong Li obsesses us to the same degree that she devours the boy. All else -- meaning, the plot's wider macrocosm -- remains tangential or dangerously opaque. It turns out that there is plenty enough drama in the day-to-day life of the gangster's moll, played by Gong Li with a seemingly infinite variety: shallow, slutty, heartbroken, tragic, pathetic, whimsical, tender. The poor boy is in a dither. One minute he hates her enough to spit in her tea when her back is turned; the next he smiles at her childish singing like the first fool in love in the history of the world. (By the way, let it be said that I would've had my left ear cut off if given the chance to be Li's boy-servant!)"Miss Bijou" could almost have become a real human being if permitted just a few more weeks on the island. The snotty poisons appear to ooze away from her; the rustic setting puts her back in touch with a girlish freedom, almost forgotten (and hardly suspected by us). In several of Shakespeare's plays, there exists what his critics call a "green world" -- a haven far away from the corruptions of urban life. Zhang permits us brief glimpses of decency that are engendered by this potentially healing "green world", all under the nose of the ruthless crime lord (who is ostensibly there to heal from his knife wound, as well). These glimpses are so powerfully touching that we tend to forget the Boss's evil eminence, and therefore the machinations of the gangsters -- never forgotten by THEM, of course -- intermittently slap us awake.All of which is another way of saying that Yue Lu's cinematography is almost too astonishing for the movie's subject. *Shanghai Triad* is, without question, one of the most beautiful-looking movies of the Nineties, perhaps of all time. But don't let the beauty of the pictures, or Gong Li's physical charms, for that matter, distract you from the preciseness of Zhang's direction. Obliged to commit to the idea of subjective camera placement (that is, generally taking the perspective of the boy), Zhang evinces great subtlety and restraint. For instance, he uses the Steadicam here, but doesn't get carried away with it in order to create some sort of mood or tone, the way Kubrick was prone to do. Zhang knows when to move the camera, and he knows when to keep the damn thing still: it depends on what each scene calls for. Every frame of this film is directed to a specific aesthetic purpose.By the way, this movie makes a natural double-bill with Hou Hsiao-Hsien's *Millennium Mambo*, another exercise in exquisite aesthetics with a plot about a gangster's moll. One wonders if Hou wasn't a bit tainted by the influence of *Shanghai Triad*, despite *Mambo*'s 21st-century setting. Both films are about inarticulate, helpless satellites in a criminal universe who come to depressing ends. Needless to say, these films could only have been made in China or Taiwan, home to a culture more ruthlessly realistic than our sappy civilization. If remade as an American film, the Boss in *Shanghai Triad* would have developed a sentimental attachment to the kid which would inevitably bring his criminal empire crashing down around his head. Imagine the reverse, and you'll get the idea of how THIS film ends.All in all, one of the classics of modern Chinese cinema. 9 stars out of 10.

Zhang's movies are an exquisite treat, like the experience of eating at one of those restaurants we are only privileged to visit every so often. A meal of this calibre must meet so many demands, and to enter the realm of truly memorable, must excel in all of them. Story, casting, cinematography - all of these must be properly seasoned and nuanced to create a work that is exciting and sublime.Zhang is one of the directorial masters of our age. To me the essential element of all his films is their basic humanity, drawing us into the story because though they may be set in distant times and far off places, we know the characters so well and can so readily empathize with their stories. Zhang's genius enters by placing his characters into such lush settings though with remarkably spare dialogue, like simple shavings of parmesan on rich bed of risotto.With this said, I will have done with the food analogy and give my unreserved recommendation to this piece. Many other commenters have aptly recounted the story of the bumpkin and gangster moll, so I'll spare you any spoilers.I will, however, point out some observations that demonstrate Zhang's prodigious talent. I noted the simple shot during the opening credits, where our bumpkin has just arrived in Shanghai. All we see is his face as he scans the bustling crowd of a train station, his face alone revealing so much detail without one word of dialogue or narration. He is new to the city, frightened, excited and apprehensive. It is apparent he is seeing many things taken for granted by those around him for the very first time in his life. We learn this from one wordless shot at the outset.Contrast the closing credits, where after the boy loses anyone he has grown to care about in Shanghai, he hangs suspended by his feet, seeing the world, the simpler, more honest world of his youth and his country upbringing, literally turned upside down. He is brought into the decadent and dangerous world of the Boss, where he and the other little girl will inevitably succumb to decadence or perish, if not both.Second, I love to frolic in Zhang's love for his native people, their innocence, pluck and natural good nature. Zhang is far to respectful and artful to coat his people in sentimental goo like many in the movies. (need I mention Forrest Glump?) The Road Home is a superior expression of this basic lovliness. I chuckle when I imagine that story told by Ron Howard or Mel Gibson. Ewwww.He is also keenly aware of the dangers lurking to consume and corrupt his naifs, whether it be western culture, as in Triad, indifferent communist bureaucracy, as in Qui Dou, simple rural poverty, as in Not One Less, or simply the heartlessness of selfish people around them, as in Happy Times.The cinematography in Triad is roundly wonderful, rich in color, dimension and expression. Zhang's love for the natural beauty of his native land is obviously abundant.Personally, I quickly forget I'm watching a chinese film when I watch Zhang's films, because Zhang's distillation of the human essence is so rarified that it transcends race and culture. This is the work of a confident master.