Film Studies Clip Analysis: Red Sorghum Assessment

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Red Sorghum

The clip under discussion comes early (starting approximately ten minutes after the beginning) in Zhang Yimou's film "Red Sorghum." Jiu-er (played by Gong Li) is being carried across a sorghum field in an enclosed sedan chair, as part of her wedding party. The wedding, as it is established in the preceding scenes of the film, is essentially a financial transaction: Jiu-er has had her marriage arranged by her parents to a much older distillery owner, Li Datou, who is a leper. As a result Jiu-er is being taken as a bride formally, as part of what the narrator describes in voiceover as "the custom of the time…the bride had to be aggrieved." As a result, the party of shirtless bare-headed men carrying the sedan-chair engages in ritualized hazing of the bride -- bouncing the sedan chair, telling her that her groom Li Datou is "purulent and putrid from head to toes" and warning her not to let him touch her -- while at the same time observing a highly formal difference in status. Jiu-er is sealed within the sedan chair and cannot see any of the men who are carrying it or calling out raucously to her: they are, after all, employees of Li Datou and must observe a kind of respect toward their employer's wife-to-be, while also engaging in this ritualized offensive banter. The social distinction is established by the difference between the interior and the exterior of the sedan chair -- a distinction that becomes crucial when we arrive at the clip under discussion.

At this point in the film, the sedan-chair bearers are suddenly confronted by a loud aggressive voice as they cross Li Datou's sorghum field.

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It is a bandit, who identifies himself as "sharp-shooter Sanpao," bearing a large handgun (that resembles a blunderbuss) and wearing a hood seemingly made from a grain sack. He orders the men to drop the sedan-chair and hand over their money, and also to remove their belts, then to squat on the ground facing away from him. Then he slowly approaches and opens the sedan-chair's tent-flap door, to reveal Jiu-er -- now wearing a red silk veil as well. The bandit Sanpao, not removing his rough cloth hood, pulls the silk veil from Jiu-er's face, then reaches down to grab and fondle her foot. She smiles, but he points the gun at her and demands she move into the sorghum field. She manages a brief significant glance of eye contact with "famous sedan carrier Yu" (the narrator has aready told us "later he became my grandfather" so to some extent the potential meaning in the relationship was established in voiceover) and then follows the bandits instructions. Once she steps into the sorghum field, and the bandit moves to follow, the sedan bearers leap up and jump on the bandit from behind, beating him to death. Removal of his hood (which is heard, but not seen as the camera focuses on Jiu-er) reveals that he is in fact not Sanpao, but an impersonator. Meanwhile Jiu-er's connection with Yu is continued as she returns to the sedan, seals herself inside it,….....

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