Summer Palace (2006)

The greatest movie ever!

I saw this movie before reading any reviews, and I thought it was very funny. I was very surprised to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews this film received from critics.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Summer Palace is a politically charged drama from director Lou Ye.The movie features Hao Lei and Guo Xiaodong.The screenplay by Lou Ye, Feng Mei and Ma Yingli tells the story of Chinese political upheaval through the eyes of protagonist Yu Hong, who moves from her rural community to embrace life in Beijing. Spanning nearly 20 years, the film elucidates the mindset of the Chinese revolutionary youth during the 1980's and into the new millennium through its narration by Hong, who reads diary excerpts to set scenes.Yu Hong is a beautiful 17-year-old girl who is soon to leave the small border town where she was born and raised to attend college at Beijing University. Shortly before Yu Hong leaves for school, she gives her virginity to her longtime boyfriend, Xiao, and pledges to remain faithful to him. At Beijing University, Yu Hong makes friends with Li Ti,another girl dealing with a long-distance relationship, and meets Zhou Wei, a handsome student who soon steals her heart. Yu Hong leaves her relationship with Xiao behind to commit herself to Zhou Wei, and she's swept up by her feelings for him as they embrace the new social and economic freedoms which are being felt on campus. The empowerment felt by the students in Beijing comes to a head during a series of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square; the protests have tragic consequences, and the excitement of new possibilities gives way to a feeling of defeat. Yu Hong and Zhou Wei are separated and the heavy hand of the state is brought to bear on the rebellious students.The movie suffers from excessive length and inconsistent pacing.Also,one who does not speak the movie's language needs full concentration to follow what's happening in the plot and to get the message that it is trying to impart.But nevertheless,it manages to be a brilliant and excellent film encapsulates an important moment in Chinese history and will especially enlighten viewers to the nuances of people struggling for freedom.Aside from that,we get to see the coming-of-age and maturation of Hong as she gets exposed to the her world and the changes she undergoes in response to it.

"Because it is only when we make love that you understand that I'm gentle."That's all the character development I need. This is an ambitious film about the stalled maturation of an idealistic but troubled young woman flanked by the Tiananmen Square protests, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the handover of Hong Kong to mainland China. The film spans a decade and a half from 1987 to 2003 so I guess the misery of Three Gorges Dam couldn't make the final cut. The direction is a little chaotic at times but it reflects the nature of the film and doesn't come off as too much of a liability. The soundtrack is impeccably chosen and the film is ultimately very sad. I was glued to this 140 minute masterpiece. Politics aside, and they are on the side, this is a remarkable film in its honest portrayal of failure, not of personal character necessarily, but of circumstance.This is another film that got its director and producer banned for five years from making films in China. Maybe it's the full-frontal nudity or the sheer quantity of sex scenes but I don't see the need for hubbub. The film is about a woman's self-reflection on why she finds comfort in the arms of different men. We see her naked inside and out. She is afraid to love out of fear, fear of something she hasn't yet experienced, but isn't that the scariest kind of fear?There are a number of things wrong with the film, perhaps, but very little could be done to improve it. Great films succeed in spite of their weaknesses. I'm not a fan of off camera narration but it works for me here. It seems additional rather than necessary. There is a maturity to the woman's voice as she narrates with entries from her diary that compliment, do not seem at odds with, the can't quite grow up activities of the woman on screen. In order to get from the Berlin Wall to the Hong Kong Handover, 1989 to 1997, we're treated to narrative on screen text to fill us in on what's happening to the characters. Ordinarily that would be a deal breaker for me, in theory at least, but again, it works. Finally, as if this were a real story about real people, after the final denouement occurs we're given updates on what happened or didn't happen to the principle characters. Frankly, as gut-wrenchingly sad but true as the final scene is I wish it would have just faded to black. But I think it's a tribute to the strength of the characters that I found myself intrigued by the postscript.Having said that, I think one could argue that from a strictly script perspective a little more fleshing out was in order ... and I don't mean that full-frontally. I think it comes down to this: if you've ever known passionate, poetic, misguided people, you know these people right away. They're part beautiful and part brutal, there's no talking them out of it. That's the point. This film doesn't set out to explain, diagnose, or change its characters. It just wants to show them to you in all their painful glory, and I think it does a very good job of it. Then again, maybe it's just a case of been there, done that.

I just saw Summer Palace last night in San Francisco and I was blown away. I spent the entire night thinking about the film and significance of the message it sent. I don't want to spoil anything, you just have to see it and be prepared to think about it for a long time. I can't wait for my wife to see it, so we can discuss it. I didn't want to see it at first but after I read the review in the Chronicle saying that it was the greatest film to come out of China, well I guess I felt I had to see it and I am so glad that I did. Some people might find it slow, but that is life right? Sometimes it is slow and sometimes it moves so quickly is passes you by and only later to find the real message the director was trying to deliver. It is as though there are five different stories going on with just one character. I know that doesn't make sense but when you see it, you will understand. I highly recommend it.

it's hard to write about this film, because it leaves you with the feeling that there is little point communicating within any species that could produce it. everybody sure looks uglier coming out of the theatre than going in. mean-spirited bombast like this--where the only suspense is whether the nasty world the film creates will turn out to be more self-important or more self-pitying--debases and deadens the audience. to cover for the fact that nothing is happening (in the causal sense, that Mr Jones doesn't get), the director subjects us to such cheap tricks as incessant cutting and multiple soundtracks (including an extended fingernail-on-blackboard "seven little girls in the backseat" as background for 'live' music). noise piled on noise, aurally, visually, causally. to condemn all this as sound and fury signifying nothing would be to elevate it; contrasted with sitting through this film, nothing would be paradise. i've never seen any of the mechanical blue movies of the repressed 1950s, but i'm sure that none of them present sex that is any more boring and over-miked than you get here, or with characters who are less interesting. and all this in the service of a base worldview: the tenor of the film is that the student participants in China's 1980s' democracy movement shattered at Tien An Min square were uncorked hysterics, heads-in-the-clouds, minds-in-the-muck lost goats. too bad, because the benfits and costs of repressive societies vs democratization are a compelling topic, but saints preserve us from the heavy-handedness and cheap tricks that make Summer Palace so excruciating to sit through.