Red Sorghum by Zhang Yimou 1988

Sorghum is the most proletarian of plants.  It's tough and can be used as a staple food even in arid climates. To talk about using sorghum to make wine takes us right into the state-sponsored commie-pinko symbolism that pervades this film.  Red Sorghum (sorghum wine) symbolically represents the elevation of the proletariat to a higher level - at least rhetorically.

Indeed, Red Sorghum was the first big Chinese film of the contemporary era to break into the western market.  Albeit it was the art film market, but I can vaguely recall going to see this film at the Music Box theater in Chicago toward the late 80s.

In retrospect, I'm a little shocked this film was taken so seriously since it is, as I intimated above, little more than Chinese Communist Party propaganda from the late 80s.  There's no real aesthetic theme - indeed, there are two big POLITICAL (writ large) themes in this film.

Jiu'er (the young female hero of this film) is sold to the 50 year old owner of a distillery, by her father, as a bride.  To really make the audience aware that 'capitalism is bad', the old guy private business owner buying the girl has leprosy (nice subtlety in the symbols here huh?  The author of this novel won the Noble Prize for literature, but since Obama recently won for peace we know how valuable Nobels have become).

A worker gets horny for Jiu'er, knocks her up in a sorghum field (semi with and against her will), and kills Mr. Leper-Bigbucks. So Jiu'er and the workers take over the distillery and viola!!!!  the distillery becomes more successful under the eager hard labor of the proletarians than Mr. Capitalist Leprosy could ever make it.

So that's political message one.  Thank God, ooops, Thank Marx and historical materialism that all these capitalist lepers are gone and that China is now a workers' paradise!  Look how happy everyone is now to do the same back-breaking labor!

Political message two is more problematic.

To this day the Chinese government uses WWII atrocities committed by the Japanese military to galvanize its population against that nation.  Never mind that all the war criminals were hanged and that there is nary a war criminal left in Japan.  Forget that Japan (until Abe came along) was very much a pacifistic country.  The Chinese government regularly looks for excuses to scratch the old wounds and there is no indication they ever intend to stop. Indeed, it could be argued that folks like Abe came along because, frankly, some Japanese folks are getting tired of this wound scratching.

So in the second part of the film the evil Japanese come along and force a Chinese butcher to skin a Chinese worker to death.

So this film won the Golden Bear Award from Berlin (West Berlin believe it or not) and was a successful film here.  Basically it boils down to facile political propaganda that becomes maliciously anti-Japanese at the end.

This is a shame since I have liked some of Zhang Yimou's other stuff - please watch Raise the Red Lantern, which I also have posted somewhere on this blog.

Here's some nice commie propaganda for you to watch.
Access Red Sorghum here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=415CReI3zps