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I’ll admit it: I’m not well-schooled in the intricacies of the propaganda film
(although, if we’re being honest, I’m hardly well-schooled in anything). I don’t just mean film
with a political message, because those are arguably a dime a dozen, or film that happens to
include awkwardly contained proclamations of propagandistic intent - films that are legally
obligated to stop every few moments, pause the narrative, and proclaim glory to whatever
political ideology the regime they are being made under holds I mean, rather, those films
whose primary, overarching messages are of upholding the current government, films with,
more or less, that one purpose and that one purpose only.
Any disinterest in this genre is, I hope, pretty understandable; a movie like that
seems to be a recipe for uninspired filmmaking, filled with copy-and-paste government
slogans, bland political imagery, and pedantic, moralizing anecdotes that resonate with
exactly no one. They’re both boring and naive, replacing the worship of artistic intent for
the worship of a cold, distant political ideology.
Imagine my surprise, then, when a film I thoroughly enjoyed, Zhang Yimou’s Red
Sorghum (1987), turned out to be such a carefully crafted, yet undeniably nationalistic tale.
Like others of its genre, it is, in places, pretty naive and overtly obvious, with its clear
championing of a workers’ communism and brutal depiction of the second Sino-Japanese
War. Its imagery is heavy-handed - we get it, red sorghum is red, guys - and its tale is
undoubtedly a creation myth of sorts for modern China, and yet... It’s also good. Like, so
good. It’s a genuinely a great piece of art, containing its own identity even outside of its
political story.
In fact, not only is the film good despite its political commentary, it’s one of those few,
rare works that actually seems to be bolstered by it. The clever trick lies, I think, in the way
that Zhang not so much makes the human political as he makes the political human. There’s
an incredibly fine line between the two, but whereas one results in an oddly cold, alienated
narrative, the other leads to a beautiful unity between the film’s artistic identity and the
political narrative it touts. ‘Unity,’ or even, more specifically, ‘growing unity,’ should be the
tagline of this film, in fact; from the aforementioned unity between the artistic and the
political, to the themes of the literal narrative itself, to the film’s treatment of its visual
techniques, this is a story, undoubtedly, of steadily rising, growing unification.
The unity of the literal narrative is the easiest to perceive, as the winery easily unifies
around Jiu’er, the film’s main character. A classic tale of love and communism, little else
happens within the community of Red Sorghum, as the main developments of the plot
concern themselves with the increasingly strong bonds that form within this group of
workers, and especially the familial bonds that form between Jiu’er, one of the workers, and
their son, who is born about halfway through the narrative. Any threats that do happen -
most notably, the Japanese army, which arrives in the second act - are purely external, not
arising from within the community itself. In fact, these threats only serve to strengthen the
community further, driving their unity even further.
The political undertones of these narrative events are inescapable; indeed, I
obviously couldn’t resist starting to throw around political labels in the paragraph above
myself. These undertones, however, are also gradual in nature, growing in intensity over the
duration of the film. When we first meet the characters, this is purely a human story,
tracking the complicated, arranged marriage between Jiu’er and the dying winery owner, her
meet-cute romance with one of the laborers, and the unclear fate of the winery when Jiu’er’s
husband ultimately dies.
The extent to which the laborers so easily and quickly rally around
Jiu’er upon their old supervisor’s death is, perhaps, a tad unrealistic, but it still presents a
smooth introduction of the political allegory of the story. Even after this moment, however,
the humanity of the narrative continues, primarily thanks to the excellent backgrounding
presented by the first act: Zhang has established, first and foremost, the humanity of this
group of people, and only then divulged their political lives. When the Japanese army comes,
it is not only descending on China as a whole, but also on this particular piece of idyllic
community that we have come to know so well.
All of this is, ahem, unified most powerfully through the use of the film’s sole visual
motif, the titular red color. Zhang has always been famous for his use of color, and his debut
feature is no different; there are no easily discernible visual motifs here, no repeated images
or lyrical symbols, and yet red truly becomes the main character of the screen, featuring in
almost every scene. Like all of the elements of the film, the introduction of this device is
subtle and wholly naturalistic at first, appearing in the vibrantly crimson wedding regalia
surrounding Jiu’er as she is set to be married. The interior of the tent she travels in may be
nearly monochrome with crimson, but it’s justified with realism, only mildly surreal if you
squint.
As the plot progresses, red grows in importance, reflecting in the red wine of the
town, the red of Jiu’er’s clothing, and the red of the firelight. In all of these instances,
however, it’s still a wholly naturalistic color, innately integrated into the ordinary setting.
And yet, as the plot begins to gain its political tone, so too do these crimson objects: the red
sorghum wine is, after all, a physical manifestation of communal labor (heightened further
by the Eisenstein-like montage of the laborers at work that depicts its creation). The
nationalistic associations of red can’t be ignored, either, evoking both images of the Chinese
flag and the traditional association with communism. Yet none of these are that obvious,
really, since there never was no brow-beating shot of the unfurled flag, or any imagery of the
hammer-and-sickle or the red star. Al of these things are just quietly implicit, for the color
red is still, primarily, a narrative convenience, an image of camaraderie and fulfilling life-
work.
So in-obvious are these things, in fact, that it’s only in retrospective that it can truly
hit you how significant that initial marriage scene was. Red, the color of communal spirit,
work, the sorghum of the earth, communism, and China as a whole, had flooded the screen,
shaping Jiu’er’s face. In that moment, in that introduction of her character, she had been
solidly identified with all of these nationalistic elements, as female characters often are. But
the audience couldn’t have known it yet, not really; it had all just looked so natural.
All of this is challenged, of course, when the war arrives. The Japanese soldiers
destroy the earth and its crops, they wreck the village, and, in a move of true perversion,
they try to force the villagers to skin each other alive. Doing so would expose what is most
sacred of all - the red of the inside of a human body, the literal lifeblood, that still evokes all
of these nationalistic elements discussed above. The body of the human being is constituted
of its nationalistic spirit, and the invasion of the then-fascist Japanese army is desperate to
uncover it. The heart of this tale is literally aligned with its political tones, in a move that
would usually be completely deafening in its blunt imagery. But because of Zhang’s careful
curation of imagery and build-up, it instead hits the audience without obstacle or hesitation,
with simple, pure understanding.
The very ending, when Zhang allows the screen to gradually fill with blinding red,
wordlessly brings the audience’s understanding even higher. It’s absolutely stunning in its
simplicity, bringing to mind all of the possible meanings of the color that the film had
touched on before and pushing them to an ultimate, poetic culmination. In that one, final
denouement, the film reaches its ultimate point of unification: earth, woman, China, work,
communism, lifeblood - all of these disparate elements are brought surging onto the screen.
A. DZH