The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Chen Kaige · a film · 1993 · about 171 minutes in the full version · written by Lilian Lee and Lu Wei, from Lee’s novel · as Bawang bie ji (霸王别姬), in Mandarin
Mode
Chronicle melodrama of the Peking opera; the Fifth Generation’s seriousness carried to the scale of the international historical epic
Mythos
The hegemon surrounded and his consort’s fidelity unto death; the androgyne made by mutilation; the stage as the only self
Phase
About fifty-three years, from 1924 through the Japanese occupation, the end of the war, 1949 and the Cultural Revolution, framed by a rehearsal in 1977
Presentation
Feature film in colour, about 171 minutes in the full version, in Mandarin; dated sections between a frame; the title opera staged or rehearsed across the whole film
Register
From a boy’s sixth finger cut away at a school gate to a bonfire of costumes; amber lanes, theatre smoke, blue-white snow, and the painted face in close-up
Scale
Two actors and a woman, one opera, four regimes
Governing Proposition
Two boys are beaten into the opera’s king and his consort, and play the parting of Xiang Yu and Yu Ji for half a century while every regime that comes over the stage asks them for the performance it wants. The wager of the film is that the making of an art and the maiming of a person can be shown as one act, and that a self made wholly by a role cannot survive a history that demands each person renounce what he has been.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The film opens in 1977, in an empty, darkened sports hall, where two actors in costume have come to rehearse. Then it goes back to 1924, to a woman bringing her small son to the gate of an opera school. The school will not take him, because he has a sixth finger. She cuts it away, and he is taken. The first price of the art is paid before the boy has sung a note, and it is paid by his body.
The boy is Douzi, and in the school he is made into a dan, a player of women. The training is chant and blow: Master Guan, played by Lü Qi, beats the boys in rhythm, and the film cuts to the same rhythm. Douzi cannot say a line of the opera as a girl; he keeps saying it as a boy, and is beaten for it, until Shitou, the older boy who protects him, forces a pipe into his mouth. Then he says it as a girl. Shitou is to play the king, and Douzi the consort.
Chen Kaige made the film in 1993 from a screenplay by Lilian Lee and Lu Wei, after Lee’s novel, with Gu Changwei photographing, Pei Xiaonan editing and Zhao Jiping writing the music. Hsu Feng produced it for Tomson of Hong Kong, and it was made in mainland China with the Beijing Film Studio. It premiered at Cannes in May 1993 and shared the Palme d’Or with The Piano. The full version runs about 171 minutes; the training at the school takes up nearly a third of it.
Movement II
Douzi and another boy, Xiao Laizi, escape into the city. They eat sugar haws in the street and find their way into a theatre, where from the stalls they see a master singing Xiang Yu, the hegemon. The sight sends Xiao Laizi back to the school weeping, to the beating he knows is waiting. It is the film’s first summit, and it is comic and wide-eyed and dreadful at once.
The school answers with punishment, in the courtyard and in the snow, and Xiao Laizi, who had stuffed himself with sugar haws in the street, is found hanged. The film does not separate the two things: the stage the boys gazed at and the death it led to belong to one order, and that order will govern everything after. The trade passes on its cruelty, and it marks its children for life.
The boys grow up as Cheng Dieyi, played by Leslie Cheung, and Duan Xiaolou, played by Zhang Fengyi, and become the stars of Farewell My Concubine. In the opera Xiang Yu, surrounded and lost, parts from his consort Yu Ji, and she, loyal unto death, takes his sword. In the first full performance, Cheung’s Yu Ji turns with the swords, and the film’s chief achievement of craft is already in view: a performance carried in the hands and eyes of a dan actor, off stage as on.
Movement III
For Dieyi the stage and life are one continuum; for Xiaolou they are two worlds. Dieyi lives the consort’s fidelity, and Xiaolou, who is a king only in paint, marries. His bride is Juxian, played by Gong Li, and she is the rival whose marriage breaks the stage pair. Gong Li gives her force in a role written thinner than the two men’s. The camera passes again and again between the painted face and the face beneath, and for Dieyi the paint is the self.
Around the pair, power changes hands. A patron, Yuan Shiqing, played by Ge You, stands over the stage, and the old court uses Dieyi in a eunuch’s house. The Japanese occupy Beiping in 1937, and Dieyi sings for them while Xiaolou is held. In 1945 the Nationalists return, and there is a trial, written broad and close to farce. There is opium, and its withdrawal. Each regime arrives through the stage, and each asks of the actor the performance it wants.
This middle of the chronicle is where the film gives. The trial and the opium run as episodes, and the historical markers, soldiers in the hall and a change of flags, are staged as tableaux and permitted rather than compelled. Some time jumps are carried by titles rather than the cutting, and Zhao Jiping’s score often raises what is already high. In 1993 Miramax released in the United States a cut of about 156 minutes, which removed some of this middle; it lost less than it should have, and that is the measure of the slack.
Movement IV
In 1949 the Communists enter Beiping, and in 1966 the Cultural Revolution comes to the theatre. Dieyi has raised and trained a foundling, Xiao Si, as his heir in the trade. Xiao Si takes his role, and helps to denounce him. The cruelty the master’s rod taught is passed on, and the child Dieyi made turns it on his maker.
The night of the bonfire is the film’s second summit. Costumes and scripts burn in a rain of sparks, and the two men, faces painted and the paint splitting, accuse each other before the crowd. Xiaolou, kneeling, betrays Dieyi and renounces Juxian. The film discloses here, in action rather than in speech, that the politics of confession works through love, and turns the closest person into the accuser.
Juxian is seen afterwards in her red wedding dress, hanging. Her death is a melodrama’s more than the film’s law, and she stands partly outside the order that has bound the two men since the school. But the image holds, and it closes the chronicle: the regime that burned the costumes has taken from each of the three what the role had given.
Movement V
The film returns to 1977 and the empty hall. The two men, old now, run the opera once more, in costume, with no audience. The frame has made the whole chronicle a rehearsal, and now the rehearsal reaches the opera’s end. Dieyi takes the sword, as Yu Ji does. Xiaolou, turning, calls him by his childhood name.
The consort’s death by the king’s sword is enacted outside the theatre and for real, and the sword planted early is paid in the last shot. The film leaves open whether Xiaolou’s call of the childhood name is love or only memory, and whether Dieyi dies as Yu Ji or as himself. The myth the opera supplied ready made has become the law of a life, and the film has built it into the plot rather than cited it.
In China the film was briefly withdrawn and then released cut by the censors; the full version is the work, and it survives whole. Since Leslie Cheung’s death in 2003 the last scene has been watched through its star’s life. It remains a film about what a stage gives and what history takes, held in one structure across fifty-three years, from a sixth finger cut away at a gate to a sword in an empty hall.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged on the full version. The long opening at the school is required, though it runs to nearly a third of the film: the mother cutting away the boy’s sixth finger so the school will take him, the beatings, the line Douzi cannot speak as a girl until Shitou forces a pipe into his mouth, Xiao Laizi’s sugar haws and his hanging. Every later turn draws on it. The sword is planted early and paid in the last shot, and Juxian is required, the rival whose marriage breaks the stage pair. What holds the axis lowest is the middle of the chronicle: the trial after 1945 and the opium withdrawal run as episodes, and the historical markers, soldiers in the hall and a change of flags, are permitted rather than compelled.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The disclosure can be stated and holds: a self made entirely by a role cannot survive a history that demands each person renounce what he has been, and every regime asks of the actor the performance it wants. Dieyi is beaten into being Yu Ji, and the making of an art and the maiming of a person are shown as one act. A second truth comes at the bonfire, where Xiaolou, painted and kneeling, betrays Dieyi and renounces Juxian: the politics of confession works through love. A third is the trade’s inheritance of cruelty, in Xiao Si. Held at the bar rather than above it: the history is told in broad episodes, the occupiers are drawn more kindly than those who follow without that judgment being opened, and the melodrama sometimes states what the image has shown.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Elevation is frequent and often dreadful. The boys’ escape into the city and their sight, from the stalls, of a master singing Xiang Yu, which sends Xiao Laizi back to the beating weeping; the courtyard punishment in the snow; the first full performance of the title opera, Leslie Cheung’s Yu Ji turning with the swords; Dieyi singing for the Japanese while Xiaolou is held; the bonfire, costumes and scripts burning in a rain of sparks while two painted faces accuse each other; Juxian in her red wedding dress, hanging. The summit is the end, in the empty hall, the sword and the childhood name. Held below the top because Zhao Jiping’s score often raises what is already high, and the middle chronicle has long level stretches between summits.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The myth is built and load-bearing. The opera of the hegemon and his consort, Yu Ji’s loyalty unto death when the king is surrounded and lost, is the plot’s law: Dieyi lives the consort’s fidelity for a lifetime, and Xiaolou, the stage king, is in life a man who yields, marries and in the end betrays. The last scene enacts the opera’s ending, the consort’s death by the king’s sword, outside the theatre and for real. Around it the film builds a second archetype, the androgyne made by mutilation: the finger cut away, the line forced until the boy speaks as a girl, the old court’s use of him. The particular stays particular. Held short of the top because the opera supplies the first myth ready made, and the second is told more than formed.
Score: 8.7 / 10
The inheritance is threefold: the Fifth Generation’s break, which Chen had made himself in Yellow Earth (1984), with its static frames, silence and refusal of melodrama; the Chinese theatrical and Hong Kong melodrama; and the international historical epic of China, Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987) above all. The turns of subject are real: male love and a man who lives as a woman at the centre of a mainland production, the Cultural Revolution shown as a machine of betrayal, Peking opera as the body of a national history. The stake was real too: the film was withdrawn in China and released cut. What holds the axis lowest is the form, which turned back from the austerity of Yellow Earth to the lavish chronicle melodrama that The Last Emperor had proved with Western audiences.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Change the form and the film loses part of what it knows: that stage and life are one continuum for Dieyi and two worlds for Xiaolou. The form makes this visible. The performances are not interludes; each staging of the title opera marks the state of the pair, and the camera passes between the painted face and the face beneath, so that the paint is the self and its removal a loss. The frame in 1977, the two in costume in an empty hall, makes the whole chronicle a rehearsal, and the last action closes the play inside the film. The training scenes use the opera school’s rhythm, chant and blow, as editing. Held at its figure because the body of the film fills the chronicle melodrama’s inherited grammar well rather than remaking it.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Thirty-three years of return are evidence. The film has been argued as a landmark of queer Chinese cinema, where Dieyi’s love can be read as desire, as the role’s compulsion or as the trade’s mutilation, and the film permits all three; as a political allegory of art under four regimes; and, since Leslie Cheung’s death in 2003, as a film watched through its star’s life, which has changed how its final scene is seen. Whether its China was made for the festival and the Western gaze is contested. The questions stay open: whether Xiaolou’s last call of the childhood name is love or only memory, whether Dieyi dies as Yu Ji or as himself. Held by its span, and because the readings cluster on identity and history rather than renewing in the form.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Field: the cinema of the 1990s. Intrinsic force: the film joined the Fifth Generation’s seriousness to the scale of the international epic, and showed that a Chinese film could carry half a century of national history, queer desire and political trauma to a world audience in one melodrama. It perfected a form more than it reorganised what cinema could do. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the Palme d’Or, a Golden Globe and two Academy Award nominations; an opening of Western distribution to the Chinese period film that the decade followed; a model for the queer Chinese-language film after it, and a standing reference for Peking opera on screen. The limit stands: the decade’s reorganisation came as much from Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang and Wong Kar-wai, and the epic line it opened bent toward spectacle.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Weighed on form, presence and fabric across thirty-three years. The full version survives whole and is the version now exhibited. The charge is the history of versions: for years the American audience knew the film in a cut of about 156 minutes, and the mainland audience in a censored release, so that the work as made was for a time displaced in two of its largest markets. That is charged, though the original was never lost. Presence is continuous and wide for a film in Chinese: revivals, home video, teaching, and a place in Chinese popular memory reinforced by its star. The fabric ages little, since it is a period film of the 1920s to the 1970s, and its early-nineties gloss of colour and score shows only lightly.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Gu Changwei’s photography carries the film: the amber of the old Beiping lanes, the smoke of the theatre, the blue-white of the school courtyard in snow, the reds of the bonfire, the painted faces in close-up. The opera is staged with real command. Leslie Cheung’s Dieyi, a performance carried in gesture, the hands and eyes of a dan actor off stage as on, is the film’s chief achievement of craft; Zhang Fengyi is solid and plain as the man who is a king only in paint; Gong Li gives Juxian force in a role written thinner; the child actors of the training sequence are exact. The costs: Zhao Jiping’s score underlines, the historical markers are staged as tableaux, some time jumps are carried by titles rather than the cutting, and the trial is written broad.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the boys’ first escape, comic and wide-eyed, eating sugar haws in the street and gazing at the stage, and the bonfire forty years later. One law governs both: the stage gives these people their only self, and every power that comes over the stage, the master’s rod, the eunuch, the patron, the occupier, the tribunal, the Party, takes that self as its due. The sugar haws lead to a hanging, the stage leads to the fire. The occupiers and the Nationalists, the opium and the foundling obey the same law. The range is wide, from a children’s school to a national catastrophe, and the law holds across it. The strain: Juxian stands partly outside it, her death a melodrama’s more than the law’s, and the trial’s farce sits loosely against the gravity around it.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Judged on what a film of about 171 minutes holds. The state, in four regimes, each acting on the stage; history across fifty-three years; labour, in the opera school’s contracts, rods and apprenticeship, held fully; the family, in its absence and its substitutes, the mother who gives the boy away, the brotherhood, the marriage, the foundling raised as a son; gender and desire, in the making of a man into a stage woman and in his love; art, in a whole theatrical tradition shown from inside; the sacred, in the school’s shrine to the trade’s patron ancestor and in the opera as rite. The plot integrates them: each regime arrives through the stage. Held from the top because consciousness is one man’s, and the countryside and the poor beyond the theatre are absent.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.4 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Archetypal Deep at 8.7, with The Made at 8.6 beside it. The opera of the hegemon and the consort made the plot’s law and the life’s fate, and its ending enacted outside the theatre and for real; and a making in which Gu Changwei’s photography and Leslie Cheung’s performance in gesture carry the film from the school courtyard to the bonfire.
Limiting Dimension
The Inevitable and The Swerve at 8.0: a chronicle whose middle runs as episodes and markers permitted rather than compelled, and a turn of subject, male love and the Cultural Revolution at the centre of a mainland production, made inside a returning form, the lavish epic melodrama that had already been proved. Above them, The Bottomless Well at 8.2, readings that cluster on identity and history over thirty-three years.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.0 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.3, The Made at 8.6, The Inner Law at 8.3, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on two axes: The Archetypal Deep at 8.7 clears the bar of 8.5, and The Unconcealment and The Imperishable meet it exactly at 8.5, but Pressure on Tradition at 8.3 falls two tenths short and The Swerve at 8.0 five tenths short. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.0, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 8.5. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The summit is withheld by the Epochal Gate and by the aggregate, 8.4 from a sum of 100.4, below the 9.0 that Tier V requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Farewell My Concubine (Bawang bie ji, 霸王别姬) in its full version, as released at Cannes and in Hong Kong in 1993, about 171 minutes, in colour, from the empty hall to the empty hall. Directed by Chen Kaige; written by Lilian Lee and Lu Wei, from Lee’s novel; produced by Hsu Feng for Tomson (Hong Kong) and made in mainland China with the Beijing Film Studio; photographed by Gu Changwei; edited by Pei Xiaonan; music by Zhao Jiping; with Leslie Cheung, Zhang Fengyi, Gong Li, Ge You and Lü Qi. Premiered at Cannes in May 1993, where it shared the Palme d’Or with The Piano. Versions differ: Miramax released a cut of about 156 minutes in the United States in 1993, and the mainland release of 1993, after a brief withdrawal, was cut by the censors. The full version is the object; the shorter cuts are weighed only under The Imperishable. Every axis is judged on the film in Mandarin; subtitles are a reader’s aid, and nothing here is charged to them. No print, script or subtitle file was consulted, and no dialogue is quoted. Details that could not be verified are not given, among them the extent and content of the mainland cuts, the exact list of dated title cards, the number of times the title opera is staged, any restoration and re-release, the wording of the consort’s vow, and claims about the film’s place among Palme d’Or winners.