Raise the Red Lantern (4½ Stars)

Introduction

Zhang Yimou's "Raise the Red Lantern" (1991) is a visually stunning yet emotionally harrowing portrait of power, desire, and control in a rigidly patriarchal world. Set in 1920's Republican-era China, the film follows Songlian, a young woman who becomes the fourth wife of a wealthy feudal lord and finds herself trapped in a system of ritualized domination. Beneath its exquisite surfaces, the film offers a profound critique of social hierarchy and the persistence of Confucian patriarchy. Through its careful use of color, space, and ritual, "Raise the Red Lantern" reveals how beauty and tradition can serve as instruments of oppression.

Plot Synopsis

After her father's death leaves her family destitute, nineteen-year-old Songlian (Gong Li) agrees to marry a rich master, becoming his fourth wife. Upon arriving at the vast, stone-walled estate, she learns that each wife lives in a separate courtyard, and that the Master's favor is signified by the lighting of red lanterns outside the chosen wife's quarters each night.

Initially, Songlian believes she can manipulate this system, but she soon discovers a world steeped in deception and rivalry.

First Mistress, Yuru, is resigned and embittered, holding onto seniority but little affection.

Second Mistress, Zhuoyun, feigns kindness while scheming to undermine others.

Third Mistress, Meishan, a former opera singer, is passionate and rebellious, pursuing a secret affair with the family doctor.

Songlian's own attempts at self-assertion – including a false pregnancy meant to win attention – spiral into tragedy when Meishan's infidelity is discovered and punished by execution. Isolated and powerless, Songlian descends into madness. As a new fifth mistress arrives, the red lanterns are lit once more, restoring the appearance of order. The cycle continues.

Symbolism and Visual Style

The Red Lanterns

The film's central symbol, the red lantern, embodies the seductive face of power. Lit outside a wife's quarters to mark the Master's favor, the lanterns appear warm and intimate yet signify ownership and control. They represent both privilege and imprisonment, their glow a reminder that desire has been institutionalized. When Songlian is punished and her lanterns are covered in black cloth, the extinguished light becomes a symbol of erasure – a literal and emotional darkness.

Color and Composition

Zhang Yimou's visual precision transforms every frame into a tableau of meaning. The film's dominant red palette – vibrant yet oppressive – connotes both passion and danger. The cold gray architecture of the compound heightens the contrast, underscoring how ritual beauty conceals emotional sterility.

The camera's symmetrical framing and static long shots evoke a sense of confinement. The courtyard's geometry traps the characters within invisible lines of power, and the repetition of movement and color mirrors the monotony of their ritualized lives.

Architecture and Space

The mansion functions as a visual metaphor for the patriarchal system. Its walls are high, its courtyards uniform, and its servants omnipresent. Women occupy separate, near-identical quarters, creating proximity without intimacy. The film's frequent use of doorways, windows, and screens to frame characters within frames suggests surveillance and fragmentation – a world where private emotion is constantly on display but never free.

Sound and Silence

The soundtrack relies heavily on silence and repetition. The sound of ritual – servants' footsteps, bells, and chants – replaces music, reinforcing the mechanical nature of life within the compound. When music does appear, as in Meishan's operatic singing, it becomes a fleeting act of resistance, silenced as swiftly as it begins.

Cultural and Historical Context

Confucian Patriarchy and Feudal Hierarchy

The Master's household represents a microcosm of Confucian social order, where hierarchy, ritual, and obedience define every relationship. The Master is an unseen but omnipotent authority – the patriarch whose approval determines identity and worth. The wives' ranked positions mirror the Confucian emphasis on structure and stability at the cost of individuality.

Zhang Yimou contrasts this static order with Songlian's modern sensibility. Educated and self-aware, she embodies a generation caught between feudal submission and modern independence. Her suffering reveals how outdated moral codes continued to dominate even as China entered a new century.

The "Three Obediences and Four Virtues"

Traditional gender ideals in Confucian thought dictated that women obey their fathers, their husbands and their sons. In the film, the wives' entire existence revolves around pleasing the Master. Their rivalry is not natural but socially engineered, ensuring that they police each other instead of challenging authority. Even rebellion, such as Meishan's affair, is framed as moral corruption rather than an act of human longing.

The four virtues are morality, proper speech, modest appearance and hard work.

Ritual as Control

Zhang's portrayal of ritual – from lantern lighting to meal service – illustrates how repetition sustains power. Ritual replaces morality; appearance replaces sincerity. The system endures because everyone participates in it, willingly or not. The film thus becomes a critique not only of patriarchy but of any ideology that disguises domination as harmony.

Political Resonance

Although set in the 1920s, the film's critique extends beyond its historical setting. Upon release, "Raise the Red Lantern" was banned in mainland China, partly because its depiction of ritualized obedience was seen as an implicit commentary on contemporary authoritarianism. The Master's invisible control and the household's blind conformity evoke the mechanisms of political as well as domestic power.

Conclusion: Beauty as a Mask for Tyranny

Raise the Red Lantern is a masterwork of cinematic irony – a film that uses beauty to expose brutality. Zhang Yimou's meticulous aesthetics lure the viewer into admiring the very system that destroys his characters. The elegance of the lanterns, the symmetry of the architecture, and the precision of ritual all serve as metaphors for how oppression disguises itself as order.

Songlian's tragedy lies in her awareness: she sees the system's cruelty yet cannot escape it. Her descent into madness marks both defeat and protest – a final refusal to participate in the game of submission. The closing image, as a new mistress enters and the lanterns glow once again, freezes the story in perpetual repetition. The household – and the society it represents – endures through ritualized renewal of suffering.

In the end, "Raise the Red Lantern" transcends its historical context to become a universal meditation on the seductions of power and the cost of conformity. It is a film about how tradition, beauty, and control intertwine – and how, beneath the red glow of ritual, human freedom flickers and fades.