Raise the Red Lantern
1991, directed by Zhang Yimou
If it’s true that films speak through their structure, it’s also the case that the structure of a film can speak through its irregularities. Raise the Red Lantern is divided into four parts, but the parts are not at all evenly weighted. The story of Songlian’s entry into a polygamous marriage and her loss of status spans three seasons – summer, autumn, and winter – followed by a brief coda introducing her successor the “fifth mistress” in the next summer. Apart from providing a realistic measure of time, there’s no compelling reason for such a conspicuous demarcation, except that the four seasons correlate to the four wives around whom the story is built. In fact the symmetry goes deeper than that, and it tells us intuitively how to weigh the story.
Besides the unequal lengths of time given to the seasons, the greatest irregularity is that spring is missing. Spring is the first full season in the Chinese and Western calendars, a time of beginning, a new cycle of growth and death. Its absence from the plot corresponds to the effective absence of the first mistress, the eldest of the wives, who never receives the privilege of the red lanterns, foot massages, and choice of meal that signify the master’s conjugal visits. As she says when the second and third mistresses bicker at the dining table, “What do I matter? I’m just an old woman.” She’s a placeholder in the plot, her only real action being a formality when she sanctions the inevitable punishment of Songlian’s servant Yan’er.
If we want to be pedantically precise about the structure of Raise the Red Lantern, we could say that it has six parts: summer, autumn, winter, the missing spring, a vestigial fifth part the following summer, and a nominally present sixth part, the prologue, that lacks the status of the other five. The master’s wives fit the same pattern. Three of them (second mistress Zhuoyun, third mistress Meishan, and fourth mistress Songlian) play active roles in the story and in the household; the first mistress Yuru is figuratively missing; the unnamed fifth mistress is a footnote to the story; and Yan’er is an unofficial sixth wife, apparently enjoying intimate relations with the master.
Also fitting this pattern are the houses within the palace. Each mistress has a house, of which three are lit on occasion with the ceremonial red lanterns. The houses are architecturally identical, distinguished mainly by their wall decorations. Songlian’s room is hung with calligraphy, suitable for the former student, the most intellectual of the wives. Meishan’s room is hung with oversized theater masks, reminders of her artistic background. Zhuoyun’s room is hung with landscape paintings, images of nature befitting her easygoing manner and apparently humble background. Yuru’s room has nothing to distinguish it except for its woodwork, complementing her role as an empty avatar of tradition.
The vestigial fifth house is not the fifth mistress’s, whose house is presumably reused, but rather the tiny “house of death” in the corner of the roof. The extraneous sixth house could be Yan’er’s room which she furtively decorates with forbidden red lanterns, but if it’s the wall hangings that distinguish the houses, then the extra “sixth” house could just as well be the shared dining hall, whose row of large human portraits mark it as the palace’s social space.
The pattern also extends at least partway to the household’s children, of whom three are real, one is missing, and one is only mentioned. Each of the first three mistresses has one child – a son, a daughter, and a son respectively. In her fabricated pregnancy, which plays a large role in the plot, Songlian is mother to the missing child, and another prospective child comes up in the dialogue when Zhuoyun tells the master she wants to give him a son. No mention is made of any possible sixth child, but if we read between the lines of the third mistress’s subterfuge, it appears that her feigned illness is a means of bringing her beloved doctor closer, and that she’s playing on the master’s hope for a pregnancy. It seems unlikely that he would interrupt his first night with a new wife and move the red lanterns to the third mistress solely out of concern for her health. As we find out later, a prospective pregnancy is a strong occasion for placement of the lanterns.
All these complications resolve into a fairly simple pattern. Each category – seasons, wives, houses, children – consists of a triad of real or active members, and a second triad of lesser members: one missing, one reduced, and one unimportant. The essential point is that the second triad is a reflection of the first. Of the three active wives, Meishan will be executed (made missing); Songlian will be labeled as mad (reduced); and Zhuoyun is aging into unimportance. Likewise, of the three real children, Feipu is usually absent; Feilan will be reduced to an orphan; and Yizhen is a “useless” daughter.
By the same token, there are also three musical instruments heard diegetically in Raise the Red Lantern – flutes, Meishan’s voice, and the foot massage rattles – and each is “ghosted” after being taken away. Only Feipu’s flute is ever heard, but at the moment the master tells Songlian he had her precious flute burnt, a soft flute enters the soundtrack like the spirit of Songlian’s father’s gift rising from the ashes. After Meishan is hung in the “house of death”, Songlian plays the dead woman’s voice on a phonograph, causing the household staff to flee in terror of a ghost. Likewise, when conjugal privileges pass to the other wives, Songlian hears the rattles coming from the other houses – a form of humiliation for every wife who’s left out.
Beyond the fairly obvious political and feminist readings that Raise the Red Lantern presents, this elaborate structure of mirrored triads is a specific indictment of power disparities everywhere. It shows how authority tends to negate, diminish, and ignore its subjects. In a moment of disillusion toward the end, Songlian asks Meishan, “What do people amount to in this house? They’re like dogs, cats, or rats.” Even the wives’ names are deprecated, so that they’re usually called by their numbers: second mistress, third sister, fourth aunt, etc. All the wives and servants live like ghosts. “People are ghosts, and ghosts are people.”
The viewer does not need to perceive the hidden structure to get the effect. The triads and their ghostly mirrors reinforce what’s already apparent, subliminally amplifying the sense of an oppressive system. In the final shot Songlian paces her courtyard like a caged animal, and we do not need to assume she’s truly mad nor believe she’s literally imprisoned in order to appreciate that she’s effectively without freedom. Though we’re told that the wives leave the house on occasion, the film confines itself to the compound from Songlian’s arrival onward, complementing the confinement that we’re well aware the women of the household must experience.
The plot of Raise the Red Lantern focuses on the rivalries and grudges among the three active wives and Yan’er. They are vicious to each other, but it only takes a minimum of reflection to see that all of their conflicts and sufferings stem from the master. Meishan is executed for infidelity, but she’s not guilty of anything her husband doesn’t do routinely. The bad blood between Songlian and Yan’er stems from the latter’s thwarted hopes. There’s a possible insinuation that Zhuoyun, whose massage skills she wishes to keep secret, had set a precedent for elevating a servant to mistress; this would account for her close bond to Yan’er. The film steadfastly withholds the husband’s appearance, denying him any close-ups, thus keeping him above the fray – but anyone can see how this corresponds to the ways that authority tends to whitewash its own role in any society’s injustices.
As important as the divisions into primary and secondary triads may be, a hierarchical division between high and low holds precedence. The opening shot pairs Songlian with her unseen stepmother, foreshadowing the barely seen master who dominates the remaining film. The palace complex is distinctly split into two levels with numerous shots looking up or down. When Songlian first meets her husband, he wastes no time putting her in her place: “How was the foot massage? A woman’s feet are very important. When they’re comfortable she is healthier and better able to serve her man.” His next words consist of three symbolic commands: “Pick up that lantern. Yes, that one. Higher. Look up.” Knowing she can’t easily refuse such simple requests, the husband thus defines their relationship while reminding her in each command of a difference between high and low. Shortly afterward, during her tour of the palace, the housekeeper tells Songlian to “kowtow to our ancestors.” For five seconds she continues standing, and the scene cuts to the continuation of her tour. Presumably she does kowtow, but in her hesitation, and in the invisibility of her obedience, the audience can imagine Songlian’s resistance.
CONNECTIONS:
The Cook the Thief His Wife and Her Lover – Structured in distinct parts along axes of time, place, and character; abundance of symmetry