Watch Red Sorghum For Free

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Absolutely the worst movie.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

The film opens with the narrator's telling us that a father has just arranged the marriage of his daughter -- the egregiously beautiful Gong Li -- to a wine merchant who is rich but leprous. We see the bride-to-be carried in a bright red sedan by half a dozen men, followed by another small band playing Chinese music on tinny instruments. It's not a Hollywood movie. The procession doesn't move solemnly across the arid landscape as it might if, say, Gene Tierney or Susan Hayward were being carried. The men holding the sedan have heavy round wooden dowels across their shoulders and are ridiculing the young lady, bouncing her up and down, singing riotously about how she will soon catch leprosy. None of this causes Gong Li any pleasure, and she discretely tucks a pair of scissors into her blouse.After the wedding and a few odd interruptions, somebody apparently kills the leprous winery owner and Gong Li is now the owner. She begins with a clean slate. From now on, she won't be called "boss" but by her real name. The men will burn everything the leper touched and will sprinkle sorghum wine all around the plantation because the wine is known to cure all evil. At this point it was beginning to sound like an endorsement of communism but the dozen workers react with such unencumbered joy, screaming drunkenly and splashing the wine all over the place, that visions of "Viridiana" came to mind. What are they going to do next, somehow desecrate Confucius? Gong Li was apparently raped on her way to her wedding by the narrator's grandfather. After she takes command of the winery, she is kidnapped by bandits and apparently abused again before being ransomed. Meanwhile, the narrator's grandfather, penniless, has been wandering the countryside. He's not too smart, gets belligerent in a roadside beef house run by the bandits.Cut. Forty-eight minutes into the story, the video clip ends with no parts to follow. And so we leave grandpa, surrounded by murdering bandits who want to cut out his tongue for non-payment of a bill at a Chinese restaurant. He's reckless, lawless, and stupid but I hope he keeps his tongue in the future in this colorful story -- such as it is.

According to other reviewers "Red Sorghum" is a cinematic wonder, a masterpiece, exquisite and many similar gushing adjectives. I wish I could agree but I cannot. Apparently this movie was based on a famous, prize winning novel. I have no idea if that novel has a point but this movie does not. The movie opens to a bride being carried in a sedan chair to the site of her arranged marriage. The groom must have been born under a bad sign, for apparently not only has he a big head but also leprosy. To cap it off he is murdered before we even get to see him, so that at least was a saving on casting. For reasons that are not clear the girl has with her a pair of scissors. Maybe she was going to adjust her hem on the way but who knows. The sedan chair carriers burst lustily into voice with a song reminiscent of "Bold Sir Robin" in Monty Python and the Holy Grail". It was actually pretty funny and I thought maybe the movie would reveal itself to be a laugh out loud comedy. But regrettably not, any humour is simply because each scene is more ridiculous and illogical than the last. This movie could have been a love story. But it wasn't. It could have been a character story. But it wasn't - the characters are all cartoons of people I could not care less about. It could have been a drama. But it wasn't, the only "drama" is contrived. It could have been a history lesson. But it wasn't, we get a one line reference to communism and a random and out of context cameo appearance by the Japanese Imperial Army. 1940's China is one of the richest, most complex, heart breaking stories in the History of the World, but do we see any of it? No dice. I could go on and dissect every scene for its stupidity and irrelevance, but I would exceed the 1000 word limit and test the reader's patience. According to other viewers Gong Li is the next best thing to Venus on Earth. Perhaps she is in other movies, but not in this one. She is portrayed as one of 500 million dirt poor peasants eking out a subsistence living out in the backblocks of China. To the credit of the film makers she is portrayed this way, not unattractive but certainly not attractive, either physically or as a person. Other reviewers praise the cinematography, possibly because it is the only redeeming feature of this movie. Sure, it has lots of sorghum leaves blowing in the wind, silhouettes of a totally out of place arch against the moon in all its phases, and lots of red tinting. But I'm sorry, pretty as it is, attempting to make a film "arty" by using all the usual suspects of "Arthouse Film 101" is a poor substitute for a real movie. If I can compare this movie to a meal it is heavy on garnish but has no meat and potatoes. It leaves you unsatisfied.

It's 1930s China. Jiu'er (Li Gong) is sent by her father to marry the leper winery owner Li Datou. On the way there, there are fields of red sorghum growing wild. She goes home to deliver the mule from Li Datou. She is taken out into the fields by Luohan where they have sex. Li Datou is killed by an unknown assailant and the winery is left to Jiu'er. Luohan returns drunk and making demands on her. He is thrown out. After he sobers up, he urinates into the wine and picks her up like in the field into her home. Surprisingly, the urine wine turns out to be the best ever. That night Luohan leaves and Jiu'er has a child. Nine years later, Luohan returns and the Japanese arrive.It starts off as a funny quirky film. It has moments of originality. When the Japanese come, the movie goes to another gear and another level. It's jarring and compelling. The red color infiltrates everything like the film itself is bleeding. Li Gong makes a terrific debut. The final orgy of violence is shocking.

Here is a solid film by Yimou Zhang, from the fifth generation of Chinese directors. Red Sorghum is told as a flashback, a narration by the main character's grandson. Gong Li plays an attractive lower-class Chinese woman who is sent, against her will, to be married to an old leper who runs a winery.The story takes place on the eve of the Japanese occupation before World War II and later features some ugly scenes from their invasion. There is an underlying motif regarding feminism (a lot of this generation of Chinese directors seemed to deal with this) and the inability of females to be even remotely empowered in this time and place. I enjoyed seeing the class boundaries and customs of late-Qing China, the occasionally goofy sense of humor, and the almost lawless, ruthless communities out in the desert.The film takes place in only a handful of locations, but features some gorgeous cinematography. The vibrant red colors (perhaps an allusion to Communist rule and foreshadowing bloodshed? It's hard to tell whether this film is for or against Communist China) are illustrated vividly by the sorghum wine and the long views of the sun setting across the Chinese desert. The pacing is slow but efficient and the story is a memorable one.It's quite indisputable (to me, at least!) that, although this was Yimou Zhang's first film, it's loads better than his later movies, "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers". Hopefully one day he'll catch up to where he started.