meaningless, boring movie - why is it supposedly good?

House of Flying Daggers was a commercial although probably excellent film that wore its heart on its sleeve. It was intended to be nothing more than entertainment and it was made to be accessible to a wide audience.

Raise the Red Lantern, on the other hand, is the complete opposite and is more of a personal film for Zhang Yimou. It certainly was not meant for everyone, but I'm still disappointed that you couldn't connect with the film. Just so we're clear though, and I'm sure this message won't be read by the original poster since I'm posting more than three months later, but there was a story and a plot as well as a logical ending. It's just not as obvious and the conclusion was not a happy one.

Though I'm as big a fan of Hollywood blockbusters as the next guy (I happen to be a huge videophile with a large collection of mindless High Definition movies loaded with explosions and car chases), movies like these are a rare treat for me.

THe whole point of this movie is depicting how CHina needs to change from their anchient values.

This film utilized Carl Jung's personality structure

The husband, like the emporer of CHina, is never seen, but controls every aspect of songolians life

The first wife represents the respect of tradition, she always says...just do what your told

the second wife represents the evil twisted nature of the chineese government, although she is pretty on the out side, she cant be trusted

THe third wife represents beuty and vanity, in terms of the chineese country, how much china cares about their own image.

Songolian represents progress, because shes "educated" but because she is repressed by the husband, or rather the emporer... there CANT BE PROGRESS

I liked this movie because it is a quinticential example of a character driven film.

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The tragedy and the fall of an innocent maiden, I would say. This is actually a smaller version of the battle between potential enemies in the palace or government in history, and what might happen in the modern office too. In such environment you don't really have a friend because the person who you think is a friend could be your worst enemy. Everyone wants the same husband to sleep with her but there is only one husband, so when one of them starts the battle all others will have to follow to survive. In an environment like that you cannot be too innocent. I mean you do not have to and cannot be evil, but you still need to be aware of what is happening around you and what it means. In Songlian's case, she is just too innocent to know what the second wife was thinking about even in the beginning, and her revenge is rather imprudent (How can one pretend she is pregnant? Even if she tells her husband that the baby dies in the womb, she might still lose her position).

Also, even if Songlian does not take action, she will probably still end up worse than the first wife -- all alone, having no power and no one respecting her in the family, and no one to share her pain with. The only way she could get a better situation is to do something, even if it could be worse than not taking action if she fails.

Boring-- Well, the plot wasn't amazing, I'll give you that. What I liked about this movie is the visual design. It's really cool the way they use the color red and contrast it with the dull gray of the place, because every one of the concubines wanted the lamps at her house. The sound was great; I'm a fan of the sound in Zhang Yimou's movies. And the movie is so Chinese. It's a refreshing experience to watch a movie that came out of a different culture than the culture of most movies I see. I agree that the visual design isn't as amazing of some of Zhang Yimou's movies. Yes, this movie was a little difficult for me to watch, and yet I loved it almost the whole time. Yeah, it sounds contradictory, but it's true.

Meaningless-- Absolutely not. I will not concede a bit to that point. It's a movie about self-centered pride and jealousy, and how destructive and pointless it is. This may be one of those things a high school English teacher would say, but I think Zhang was trying to make the whole concept of wanting the lanterns bizarre to say, "Hey, this is stupid. People need to stop being obsessed with having the coolest title or the prettiest jewels, or a fancy badge or something."

Try harder next time

Well, everyone has a different interpretation of film, of art. But from my perspective, the movie was in no way meaningless OR boring. Far from it. It was powerful, multi-layered, and the ending blew me away.

I think film tastes definitely differ from country to country. American audiences are used to movies that are a lot louder, more vocal, more action-filled (at least, in general, judging from the mainstream films in the theatres). RTRL wasn't that at all. I don't remember a character even really yelling at any point. It was quiet, barely repressed anguish. An exploration into a woman's pain. It's one of the best films centered around a female character that I've ever seen. What I liked about it is that it unapologetically centered Songlian's experience, representing concubinage as an oppressive system. In a way, it's a very feminist film, even though the director was a man, Yimou Zhang. This film made me a HUGE fan of his work!