Film Review of Farewell My Concubine

Beijing opera is one of the most famous Chinese traditional art. People in China were crazy about Beijing opera and the best performers. We call the best performers Jueer(great performer). To become to a Jueer, one person need to work on it when he or she is a kid. Maybe it is similar as ballet. On the way of growth, performers will suffer countless pain both in mentality and body. People out of the field may never learn what those pain like. 

Child was stretching his physique.

There 3 pictures show that kids who made mistake in rehearsal are being punished.

The first image is a kid being whipping on his hip. The last two images show that a kid was poked a pipe in his mouth.The punisher maybe their Shifu(teacher) or their Shixiong(upperclassman)

Kids join in the opera class are not all willing. Some of them are orphans, some of them joined because of the poverty or other problems. So there were always some kids try to flee due to the tough and cruel practice.

This is a kid crying and asking "how do they become to a Jueer?" during he was watching a Jueer performing at that age. He was the kid try to flee from the class. After the perform, he went back to the class. He saw his Shifu was whipping other apprentices who didn't stop him from escape. He couldn't stand all of these anymore and he hung himself.

Our two main roles of this movie are the best in the class. They made a vow to each other to become to Jueer together in the future and they made it years late. They became to the best partner of each other. People were crazy about them. Every performance was packed auditorium.  

The performance shot of them who are adults.

There is one thing I need to mention. The performer acting women was raped by some powerful man. He is a male but some viewer will treat him as a woman because of his perfect performance. Although they are best performers at the point, they are still bullied sometime. One reason of that is opera industry is treated as one of the bottom level of social hierarchy. The same level as whore.But they passed all of these difficulties and achieved their goal. They are tough and best artist. No one can question that.

Story is not finished here. War happened after a short glorious years. Japanese intruded China. Their army stationed in Beijing on July 7th 1937. Japanese army ask two performers to perform for them. They refused. So army caught the older performer. To save his Shixiong, younger performer promised to perform for Japanese and he did it. Japanese then released another performer. But because of this event, two performers were accused as betraying China after WW2. Court judged they as not guilty in the end. 

Few years later, commie won the civil war. And this time is the doom of two artists. Different from before, commie made them become to the enemy of Chinese because they don't want to perform like the way commie want it to be. During the China's Cultural Revolution, they were labeled as counterrevolutionary and the enemy of proletariat.

Those 3 pictures are showing they were bounded and paraded through the streets. The text on the poster hung on their chest says that 'overthrow the Beijing opera bully' and each of their name behind.

The older performer finally couldn't stand it anymore and began to expose his partner.To say the words people wanted to hear.

After all of what they have experienced. They can not get over the commie. They were totally defeated both in mind and body. They were cracked. One betrayed another one and another one did the same thing. They are no tough guys in front of red power. The red power got his own way to deal with people like them. It's different from anyone even invader. Death threat of Japanese army did not work on them. The court said they are not guilty. But this time, their own people who had little red book on their hand said they are bully. And they were cracked.Starting to at each other. The most famous roles played by two performers are the king of west Chu and his queen Yu. In the end, they were released form jail many years late. They had a last performance on the stage with no audience down there. The opera is about that West Chu kingdom was about to be defeated by East Han kingdom. The queen dancing for the king for the last time and then killed herself. But this time,queen acted by younger artist killed himself by a real sword. The desperate persecution made a great artist fell into despair and chose to end his life. 

Today, we got movie like this. For me, that means people start to introspect. Although there is a long way in front of us. The most important thing is that we try to do better to avoid those kind of awful misdeeds. In my opinion,refusing devil and regaining humanity are two significant things we need to do in a period. Anything helpful with these is worth to have a try. 

Farewell My Concubine was directed by director Kaige Chen. The movie came up in Hongkong on January 1st 1993.