The Secrets and Traps of the Chinese House
Abstract
The author takes as her starting point the symbolic treatment of Chinese architecture, as this is its most common function in film. The idea of separation shaped architecture for centuries, expressing the need to protect and isolate oneself from what is foreign and therefore undesirable, unnecessary and dangerous. Walls give cities, estates, palaces and houses an aura of security, made firm through their own, familiar identity against all that is foreign. The subject of the analysis are three films in which normally positive connotations associated with the concept of home are reversed, leading to metaphors, which go beyond what is usually associated with the house as such - i.e. a building inhabited by a family. The following works are examined: Raise the Red Lantern (1991) by Zhang Yimou, Temptress Moon (1996) by Chen Kaige and Spring in a Small Town (2002) by Tian Zhuangzhuang. In each of these films the house is conceived as a closed space, a world from which the characters trapped within it cannot escape. „Closed space” functions in these three films in different ways, but in each it is a sentence that cannot revoked and to which the inhabitants of the houses are condemned. The houses shown in these films include building, which Chen Zuoqian aquired for his concubines, a palace inhabited by the Pang family clan and Dai family home, but apart from being family homes, at the same time they are also booby-trapped houses, prison houses and ruins, that metaphorically represent China as a country closed off from the outside world. In each of these films an individual case is presented, but at the same time the houses and the families serve as a microcosm that reflects the macrocosm with all the relations between the apparatus of power, society and the state.
Keywords:
Chinese architecture, Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Tian ZhuangzhuangReferences
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Authors
Alicja Helmankwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Jagiellonian University Poland
Historyk i teoretyk filmu, emerytowany profesor Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Prowadzi badania w zakresie teorii filmu, komparatystyki. W dorobku naukowym ma ponad 20 książek autorskich, m.in.: O dziele filmowym (1970, 1981), Film faktów i film fikcji (1977), Przedmiot i metody filmoznawstwa (1985), Słownik pojęć filmowych (1991-1998), Historia semiotyki filmu, t. 1-2 (1992-1993), Twórcza zdrada. Filmowe adaptacje literatury (1998), Urok zmierzchu. Filmy Luchina Viscontiego (2002), Ten smutek hiszpański. Konteksty twórczości filmowej Carlosa Saury (2005), Odcienie czerwieni. Twórczość Filmowa Zhanga Yimou (2010).
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