User Reviews

*MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS* Stimulating, engrossing and outright fascinating portrait of two orphans, who stay friends throughout sixty years or better, in twentieth century China. They are entered in the Peking Opera Academy, where they endure the arduous rigors of training. In their childhoods, is where they master the defining roles they are destined to portray all their lives.

FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE is at times claustrophobic, subtly depressing, but never dull. It is always intriguing. The film penetrates all cultural barriers, allowing the viewer to become involved in the story. Gritty scenery and atmosphere, strong performances (Leslie Cheung is stunning in his portrayal) and brutal reality are this film's hallmarks.

An excellent foray into what telling a story, via a motion picture, is all about. Excellent and heartily recommended.

As I write this review, there are 50 comments on IMDb – 48 of which rate this film a 7/10 or higher. Needless to say, a contrary opinion is desperately needed, and I will now provide it.

Take the costume designers from The Birdcage and the fanatical sexual obsessions from Fatal Attraction. Then add a gigantic helping of Sado-Masochism, and you'll get something remarkably similar to Farewell My Concubine. Taking this into consideration, the praise this film has garnered is almost inexplicable.

The first 50 minutes focus solely on the child abuse of the two lead characters. None of the characters are remotely likable because everyone acts as if they are certifiably insane while on PCP. Children escape their abusers, only to then return and actually beg to be beaten. Boys lick each other's flesh wounds while dressed in drag, or simply pee on each other's heads. Old men (when they're not asking stupid questions like, "What year is this?") get their kicks off of beating little children or making them pee into little glass bowls. How the hell could anyone consider this tripe entertaining? Thankfully, the film calms down for the final 120 minutes (and yes, it lasts almost three excruciatingly long hours), when a woman obstructs the friendship of the two leads. But even during the better portions of the film, the negatives still heavily outweigh any positives:

(1) The sadomasochistic obsession of all of the characters rears its ugly little head on multiple occasions. The two lead characters welcome their despotism with near fanatical graciousness, and structure their entire existence to facilitate this repressiveness. This film almost glorifies abuse.

(2) The death of the troupe master is unintentionally hilarious.

(3) The entire subplot of the conflict with the Japanese practically derailed the main plot of the story.

(4) The subplot of Gong Li's miscarriage was played down too much, when it could have contributed greatly. It seemed to have little to no effect on the primary storyline.

(5) The film fails miserably to earn the viewer's sympathy for the characters. The lead character renounces his love for Gong Li. Gong Li kills herself. The film then fast forwards 11 years to imply that one of the male leads kills himself. It all seemed so ad hoc and cheap to me – a way of cheaply earning sympathy at the very end of the film.

Farewell My Concubine was a major disappointment. I was expecting it to rank amongst some of the newer classics (The Road Home, Happy Times, In the Mood for Love, Shanghai Triad, Kikujiro, 2046, Dolls, Sonatine, Eat Drink Man Woman, Hana Bi, The Isle, Chungking Express, etc.). Unfortunately, it simply fails to entertain in any significant way. The first 50 minutes annoyed me; the final 120 bored me.

So basically, if you enjoy watching men dressed in drag while singing at glass-shattering pitches that must have required the inhaling of a blimp full of helium, then Farewell My Concubine might be for you. Otherwise, stay far away from this one.

Update: Just saw Yimou Zhang's "Raise the Red Lantern", which blows this movie away on every level. See that one. Forget about this tripe.

Like the French, the Chinese seem to produce nothing but incredible movies; movies that are so culturally rich and psychologically grounded that they are almost like novels. Farewell My Concubine is about the cultural revolution in China; with the relationship between two heroes and the heroine being a microcosm of this movement.

Dieyi, who plays Concubine Yu to Xiaolou's king, represents the old society of corrupt, but noble, decadence. Warped by abuse and betrayal, victimisation literally turns him in on himself, until he becomes homosexual in so many ways. The grim passivity, of which his homosexuality is only one facet, is bitter and snide on the one hand, but stoical and brave on the other. The suffering and ugliness that lies behind his elegant pristine act (as Concubine Yu) is like the hardship, toil and exploitation that was behind the old society (with its palaces and silk clothes created by the tired hands of the proletariat). Through combining both the ugliness and the beauty of the old society in one character, the film is able to justify it: the proletariat and the nobility are one, their suffering is one, and their triumph is one. This is forcefully iterated in the scene where communist pupils attack Dieyi's aesthetic preference for noble ambience on stage (beautiful backdrops portraying aristocratic gardens rather than proletariat metal pylons). We feel the injustice and hypocrisy of their ideology, for Dieyi is tougher than any of them; he has suffered and toiled harder than the most exploited slave in the history of mankind.

Where Xiaolou represents practical masculine reality, Dieyi represents art: he talks with a distanced air of finality and confuses the opera with everyday life. This is, for the most part, rooted in psychological realism. When Dieyi is beaten he refuses to cry because his artistic temperament detaches him from rationality and gives him a tragic-heroic identity which sustains him: to cry would be death for him. Xiaolou, on the other hand, chooses to grapple with reality and play up to the masters who beat him; he takes the lashings with comic defiance and exaggerated pleas for relief. The film only goes wrong when it becomes Dieyi's mouthpiece, condemning Xiaolou for betraying him. In the world of the film, it is no more fair to say that Dieyi is braver than Xiaolou than to say that Xiaolou survives where Dieyi perishes: within their own vital spheres, both prevail.

Xiaolou's wife, is a beautiful subtle portrayal of womanhood. From her beginnings as a whore (physically and emotionally) she grows in stature until she chrysalises into the film's most worthy character. The compassion and fortitude with which she tolerates her husband's operatic partnership with Dieyi, even when it is responsible for the loss of her unborn child, is heroic in a womanly sense (a kind of heroism rarely acknowledged in literature or film). Her pity for Dieyi outweighs her jealousy: she nurses him out of his heroin addiction as if she were his mother (his mother was, significantly, a prostitute from the same whorehouse as she). However, at the end, when the two of them have both been denounced by Xiaolou, the characterisation slips into sentimentality: instead of bearing Xiaolou's callousness with contempt (as she does when he hits her earlier) she gives up on life.

Like many of the greatest works of art, this film is flawed and it is the ending which reveals and embodies this flaw: sentimentality.

An apt functional definition of art is 'a stylistic representation of an artist's views through a given medium.' A style can take many forms, such as realism or surrealism, but what all styles hold in common is the conveyance of a message. Films like "Farewell my Concubine" are political in nature, expounding a philosophy that "the personal is political ." This movie is a high-style epic drama, which is why some critics call it "whiney " or "soapy ." Although there are melodramatic elements in the film, it should not be taken at face value, but instead as representational of Chen Kaige's deep-seated feelings about the status of the Chinese people. What appears to be a story of love and betrayal amongst tumultuous political change is in fact a criticism of the dissociation between Chinese politics and Chinese culture, causing major problems throughout an individual's life.

The dichotomy between culture and politics and the tension therein caused, is shown by three broad elements: Peking Opera representing culture, extraneous political forces, and people living in between art and politics. By examining how all three elements interact we will see the director's political views and how the personal lives of characters figuratively represent the dilemma of the Chinese people.

What lies between culture and politics is the individual. The individual, like a canvas is painted by environmental factors. For Douzi and Shitou, the principle characters, their first impression in the film is the Peking opera. The Peking Opera as an environmental factor represents culture. As the troupe leader says while the children are going through difficult training, 'the Opera is what makes us human, without it we are but animals.' As people, our culture is our humanity . Food, art, clothing, religion, and ceremony culminate to create 'culture.' Without it, we could scarcely define ourselves apart from animals. The Peking Opera represents Chinese culture, and purposely so. Few elements could capture the true complexity and nuance of a culture like Peking Opera can. The movie, developed in the last three-strip Technicolor lab , allows the colour, technique, flexibility, and more, to show the product of the cultural embellishment in Peking Opera (Chinese culture). As well, to fully integrate into a culture, one must suffer cultural hazing. Douzi undergoes many initiations. His finger being chopped off, a pedophilic encounter with an old man and continual beatings for not accepting cultural role are examples of his initiations. But after accepting the throws of culture, he finds comfort and stability within his culture. Douzi's transfer of his stage character, the concubine, into real life is an affirmation of his cultural identity. The concubine must suffer in the opera, and therefore so must Douzi. The climax of his suffering is his own death, which is the ultimate instatement of cultural identity. At the opposite end of Douzi is Shitou, a character who is far more politically oriented than Douzi. Shitou can be considered a cultural sellout, someone who sees survival as more important than tradition. At the heels of Cultural Revolution Shitou abandons his history. For example, when both King and Concubine discuss their art to the young communists in an acting class, Shitou yields to the political flame of communism, agreeing with the young communists. And as artifacts of his cultural history are being burned in the streets (books and swords), he too dumps his personal history into the flames (wife and friend). Douzi can do nothing but kill himself, out of love for king and country, because his king has lost the final battle.

The tension between Douzi and Shitou embody the tension between Culture and politics. Chen shows that one end of the spectrum must suffer at the hands of the other. Throughout the film we feel sympathy for a dying way of life, especially as we grow to know more about the nature of Peking Opera. Our sympathy for opera suggests that alien political systems antagonize the cultural system, and therefore are an object of criticism. This is most apparent during the Cultural Revolution when traditional artifacts and ways of life are brutalized. The 'culture of revolution' according to Marx should destroy a bourgeois' past, and establish social and economic equality for the masses . Instead, what the Cultural Revolution destroyed was what made all Chinese equal and great, their cultural heritage. The revolutionists may have dispelled capitalist motivations, but first and foremost they destroyed the love between man and woman, between king and concubine, the very symbols of beauty in this film.

At the end of the film there is a concession to Chinese culture, when a Peking Opera is put on to celebrate the operas 200th anniversary. In Chen's China this is reality, a country opening up to the world and to new ideas. The only way to protect itself from ideological domination from America and other influences is to protect its heritage, and part of that heritage is the Peking Opera. For China to ensure the safety its heritage, the culture that has shaped individuals for thousands of years must also shape modern politics. Openly celebrating Peking Opera in Chen's film is making the personal 'political', and merging the two dichotomous entities into a single unifying element for China.

I used to know that was very famous, but never seen that before, But After watching ing, it's really amazing. The plot is very exciting. There are almost no fragments of the cold field. It's a wonderful interpretation of joy and sorrow swift in different eras, and the performance of acting as an actor. Very exciting, with this 90s movie, really impeccable!!!!!

This film follows two Beijing opera stars (stage names Cheng and Duan) from their youth in 1924 to a final performance in 1977. Cheng is somewhat effeminate and plays women in the performances, most notably the woman in the traditional opera "Farewell My Concubine." Cheng is gay and in love with Duan who is classically masculine; Duan's feelings for Cheng do not go beyond friendship. Things between the two go along well until Juxian enters the picture as Duan's lover and subsequent wife. The story revolves around the complex emotional interplay between these three, played out against dramatic historical events.

The history of China in the years covered would require a shelf full of books, but this movie concentrates on three eras: "The Warlord Era" in the 1920s, the Japanese occupation of Beijing during WWII (and its aftermath), and the Cultural Revolution during the Mao era. The interweaving of the personal stories with the themes of the opera "Farewell My Concubine," together with the historical events, is cleverly done. The telling of this epic runs to 171 minutes on the DVD.

In keeping with its operatic theme this movie has an overture that sets the tone and piques your curiosity about what is to come. This sequence seemed artificial to me until I understood its intent.

Most everyone will be impressed with the sumptuous color cinematography. The opera scenes are impressively filmed and, while I could appreciate the artistry involved, being primarily attuned to Western culture prevented my being captivated on an emotional level as I was, for example, by the operatic scenes in "Amadeus." Cheng's singing sounded more like the harsh screeching of a cat than anything that would engage me. The atonal music and highly stylized acting in the operas were interesting as artistic phenomena of a foreign culture, but it would take significant exposure for me to ever truly enjoy such, if that were even possible.

The extent to which this movie offers history lessons is not clear to me, nor is it clear how much is intended. During the 1920s the focus is on Cheng and Duan's training as young boys under the tutelage of a sadistic taskmaster. The child abuse is so graphic that some may be tempted to avert their eyes. Was the brutal treatment of the boys a symbol of the brutality of the era? I don't know. The political pressures of the Cultural Revolution must have been extreme in order to provoke the personal denunciations we see toward the end.

One thing I found odd was that, while the characters must be at least sixty years old by the end, they look like they are still in their 30s.

I admire this movie for its ambition and could appreciate it on an intellectual and artistic basis, but its epic sweep and cultural differences kept me at a distance.

This is a film about the modern history of China. If you are not in this history, you may have a lot of confusion.Even 157 minutes of movie time can be boring.The story begins with Peking Opera.This is an ancient oriental drama with incomparable dreams.It means the same to China as Shakespeare's plays do to England.But the story is not limited to it. Instead, it takes Beijing opera as the background and takes us into those 50 years with the life of two Peking Opera actors and Chinese history.You can see the change of government, the civil war, chaos, despair, obsession, and the biggest cultural destruction revolution in history.You can realize the fall and annihilation of an ideal character.Film photography is also excellent. Lens transformation, wide-angle, mobile photography, coupled with the color of memory, film directors and photographers use skilled skills to combine a large number of messy scenes into a wonderful story, and use these stories to create epic.In addition, I would like to thank the film actors for their wonderful performances. Zhang Guorong even got the best actress nomination of Cannes Film Festival. There are nearly a hundred characters in the film, but each one is very impressive. Their vivid performance will let you immerse in that period of history without feeling strange or weird.I highly recommend this movie!

After finishing watching "The Last Emperor", I found quite entertaining the way they portrayed events of modern Chinese history throughout the story of somebody's life. Since I know that movie might be a Hollywood-esque portray of those events, I looked for a movie with Chinese actors, that also developed through key events of modern Chinese history (e.g. the warlords, revolution, etc). Netflix suggested me "Farewell my concubine".

This movie was definitely not my cup of tea:

I found the first hour brutally violent, and hard to watch (the first 45-60 minutes). It might have been because in my opinion, the violence portray seemed to not help the development of the story.

The movie felt too long, and probably since I did not like the first hour of the movie due to the fact stated above, the last hour and a half felt a bit boring (something I did not feel in "The last emperor" which was also a loooong movie).

Finally. This is my own bias, since I do not like opera, the opera scenes seemed highly repetitive and the high pitch voice was hard to bear.