The Dark Glow of the Red Lantern

All one needs to know about Zhang Yimou's 1991 masterpiece "Raise the Red Lantern" is to be found the still, silent torrents rippling through Gong Li's face in the movie's opening shot. In one of the film's rare close-ups, we see Ms. Gong — who would go on to become China's leading movie star — standing before us, one of cinema's most captivating beauties. Dressed in bright red, she is a voluptuous sight, but as the narrator intrudes with details of the fate of her character, Songlian, the image slowly, imperceptibly, contorts in front of our eyes. With alarming speed, this crystallized image of beauty degenerates into a face of anger, a solitary tear streaming down her cheek.

And then another.

It is one of the most unforgettable opening shots ever conceived, and it alludes to the brilliant way in which Mr. Yimou ("Curse of the Golden Flower," "House of Flying Daggers"), in perhaps the greatest Chinese film ever made, will use the visual language of his film to tell the real story.

For starters, he manipulates the beauty of Ms. Gong, a woman capable of charging the air around her with an aura of allure and mystery, but whom Mr. Yimou purposefully obscures and confines. After that unsettling opening sequence, we are almost cruelly denied another close-up for the remainder the film, only allowed in close when her face is masked or distorted.

When Songlian arrives at her new home and reports to her master — an ambiguous authority we see only through long shots — her curse becomes clear: In China of the 1920s, beauty is not an asset but a liability, confining this 19-year-old to a life of sexual servitude. Forced to leave her home by her father's death and accept a life of servitude as a concubine for a wealthy man, she arrives at her master's vast estate known only as "Fourth Mistress," the fourth woman who must compete nightly for Master's attention.

It doesn't take her long to learn procedure and politics from the other concubines. First Mistress (Jin Shuyuan) is the matron of the household, a wise old woman ("wrinkly," as Fourth Mistress says) who observes the feuding of her juniors with the wistful disdain of someone who's made the same mistake before. The first meeting between First Mistress and Fourth Mistress is pointedly short, and as the youngest member of the household bows and leaves, she hears First Mistress sigh: "God forgives."

As Fourth Mistress meets her younger counterparts, it becomes more apparent where God's forgiveness is needed. Third Mistress (He Caifei) is a much younger woman, a friendly confidante to the newest member of the family, but fully aware that she is deemed less important in Master's eyes because she produced a daughter when he wanted a son.

The estate's sole son belongs to Second Mistress (Cao Quifen), a melodramatic opera singer who covets Master's attention and lashes out jealously at her counterparts. On nights when he is not in her bed, she awakes early to sing arias that echo across the estate, determined to interrupt the sleep of whoever is in Master's arms.

Jealousy, however, does not connote affection; this is a world without passion where sex is nothing more than a bargaining chip, the only tool these women can wield in a tyrannical power structure. On Master's estate, the concubines are divided into separate corners of the campus and expected to remain indoors. The daily routine consists of sleeping, eating, dressing well, and waiting outside their homes at sunset for the announcement of where Master will spend his evening. A lit red lantern — light in an otherwise dark world — is placed outside the chosen woman's door.

For the mistresses, everything hinges on this decision, from relatively simple matters like foot massages to the more significant possibility of becoming pregnant and delivering a son, which solidifies power over the household.

But Master's nightly decision comes to control the pulse of the movie, too. Only he can bring light into these dark, depressing rooms, and only he can grant even that modicum of power. Mr. Yimou discretely places the audience in the same position as these women; our access to this world is limited by Master's decisions.

Which brings us back to that first shot, where all three of Mr. Yimou's preferred ingredients are present. In Ms. Gong, we see ultimate beauty trapped within the most despicable of circumstances. In her dress, we see the way color will be used to link passion and beauty to ideas of repression and servitude. And his tight focus on Ms. Gong's face hints at the way he will carefully choreograph the movie's use of space. By filming most scenes with medium to long shots, he traps characters within door frames and walls; contrastingly, by filming several key scenes from rooftops that seem to be hundreds of feet away from the action, he places the mistresses' dramas in context, suggesting they are but trivial affairs playing out within a much larger cage of evil.

The final scene of "Raise the Red Lantern" is a testament to how fully Mr. Yimou has co-opted the standard cinematic lexicon. As Ms. Gong sits in Third Mistress's quarters, the camera again close to her against an evocative bright red background, the meaning of everything has changed. Our proximity to her is not a sign of her strength but of her powerlessness; the lights are not seductive but the tangible evidence of this world's ever present repression; and Fourth Mistress, a woman who began with such passion and verve, has finally been broken.

No tears this time; what's the point?

Through March 15 (209 W. Houston St., between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street, 212-727-8110).