Chinese Cinema and Zhang Yimou

This article by Eleanor Hisaye Taniguchi talks about Chinese cinema, namely, Zhang Yimou's movies. Believed to be the best "fifth generation" director, Yimou movies, such as 1984's Yellow Earth and the 1987 film Red Sorghum, were huge successes in Chinese. This was not the case, Taniguchi states, for those movies banned in China and Hong Kong.

Taniguchi talks in great detail about Zhang's global-breakthrough movie, Hero.

"Zhang's true redemption in the eyes of the Chinese government however, came with the release of Hero in 2002."

The article continues to talk about how the movie was the most successful Chinese film gross around $100 million in China, America, and Hong Kong combined.

Taniguchi later touches on the color coordinated scenes, "characters float through color themed sets,... pursue one another over trees bathed with autumn gold, ride through yellow deserts with blue mountains in the background."

Many of the questions we raised in class about Hero were touched in this article.
Taniguchi believes Zhang portrayed Snow as a "unruly, destructive" female protagonist in the film, thus this film implies women are wrong, and men know better.

Also, Taniguchi thought Hero intoned that centralized government is good, which puzzled her since

"The Emperor Qin, known to every Chinese schoolchild as being a brutal tyrant who unified China"

was portrayed as a wise, somewhat emphatic ruler, with a "grand vision" for China.