"Raise the Red Lantern" (1991)

Director Zhang Yimou makes it easy for the audience to be captivated with the life of a nineteen years old girl who is forced into a world full of schemes, deceit, hatred, and constant battles for attention as she becomes the third concubine of a rich landowner.


The beauty of “Raise the Red Lantern" is that it uses a simple storyline to convey flawlessly the ugliness of human nature and its horrifying and damaging results. It is a film that not only focuses on the atrocious oppression and objectification of women, but also concentrates greatly on the helplessness and vulnerability of those trapped within such a system. “Raise the Red Lantern” does well to describe to the society of China in the 1920s, a society full of traditions, hierarchies, and the need for self preservation.

Song Lian may have had half a year of college education, but that does little to rid her of the dependence on men through family and marriage and to help escape her fate as a woman of the times. Her education may have set her apart from the three other mistresses of Master Chen, but it is simply a feature that poses as a temporary advantage to further entice her master before he grows tired of her company.

Although there may be a social difference between an educated woman and an actress (as in the case with the Third Mistress), as women, there is no difference; the two are both subjected to the same fate. Whatever they do and whatever is done to them is for the sole purpose of serving and pleasing men. A woman is “a piece of clothing” for the man to control when he wants to wear, toss, and destroy that insignificant item.

Yet, women still actively participate in the perpetual struggle for attention, power, and status in order to secure a desirable position in this vicious human food chain to preserve the individual. Song Lian’s independent will and pride of an educated female is broken down as she sheds tears for her surrender to such a life, and eventually she feels the need to lie about her pregnancy as she tries to be calculating like the other mistresses. The exposure of her lie is her failure to fight effectively. It not only leads her to a life of isolation, but also to the destruction of her spirit.

She comes to the conclusion that the endless competition is meaningless; life is meaningless. Everything is simply an act; everything is a lie.

Yet, that is the life you must lead. That is the life that you are forced to lead.

The world of Master Chen and his four mistresses is no different than the dog-eat-dog world that exists outside the walls of their home. There is no security. There is no truth. Those who rebel or fail to obey the valued customs and rules of tradition are ultimately destroyed.

What is human in such a society? It is one step away from being a ghost, and perhaps there is not even a difference.

The last scene of “Raise the Red Lantern” is particularly haunting. Song Lian is at last driven to insanity after she witnesses the murder of the Third Mistress (the punishment for the Third Mistress’ adulterous acts), and she wanders aimlessly inside an enclosed, rectangular area of Master Chen’s household surrounded by brightly lit red lanterns.

She is forever trapped in this place of red lanterns, a place where one man controls all the lives of those inside his walls.

She is forever subjected to lead a life in which she has no control over.

She is to live a life that cannot be claimed as her own.

What is human?

What is life?