The Banquet

I watched “The Banquet (夜宴)” recently and really enjoyed it very much. It’s a movie by Ziyi Zhang (章子怡), You Ge (葛优), Yanzu Wu (吴彦祖), Xun Zhou (周迅), and Xiaoming Huang (黄晓明), directed by Xiaogang Peng (冯小刚). The story is pretty simple actually, given the fact that many other Chinese movie I watched like to play around with complex stories and content which are too abstract, like “Wu Ji(无极)” or even “Hero(英雄)” which I enjoyed a lot a couple of years back. “The Banquet” is about the relationship between an emperor who reached the throne by killing his own brother, the queen who is in love with the prince, the prince who tries to avenge his father, a minister trying to make his own son the emperor, and his daughter who is too naïve to understand the darkness of the palace’s politic, but still gets in the way of everyone else, and the plot against each others is set to explode in a night banquet. Simple enough? :-)

The fighting scenes, the setting, acting, and music are really cool. The movie is really slow, but it allows the audience to view the setting of the palace, which is really nice. I’m not sure if they use any 3D effect for those scenes, but the design of the palace is really brilliant. For “Hero”, the scenes in the forest and mountains are captivating; “The Banquet” on the other hand, has very beautiful scenes inside the palace. There are details in almost every object, makes me want to be in that place as well.

The fighting scenes are quite gruesome, blood flying here and there, things like that, but the actions are really good. Too bad there aren’t many scenes on that. Then again, this isn’t really the Bruce Lee or Jet Li kind-of movie anyway. Plus, as a huge fan of armor and weaponry design, the armor of the royal guard is pretty cool too. This is the first time I see Chinese armor with a heavily-decorated mask.

In terms of the acting, finally there’s another movie where I find Ziyi Zhang is brilliant. :-) the last one I watched with thumb’s up for her is 2046. You Ge is always good, especially is he plays the emperor, or anyone evil :-) Personally I like You Ge’s performance in this movie the best.

Anyway, “The Banquet” is still in cinema, I guess. So, for those who love movies about Chinese history, go and watch this one!

Images are from their official website.