Longing for something you can never have is perhaps one of the cruelest forms of emotional torture a person can put themselves through, and it’s an experience all too familiar within queer communities. Every queer person has had the one crush, or perhaps an actual romantic involvement, with someone who cannot, or will not, reciprocate feelings. It’s a hard lesson for many a young queer person to respect yourself enough to move on from things you cannot control, and even then, sometimes it’s difficult to argue with what your brain makes you feel. Chen Kaige’s 1993 dramatic epic, and Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner, Farewell My Concubine (霸王別姬) sets this specific form of longing amongst some of the most drastic cultural changes any country has ever seen, intertwining sexual repression, political turmoil, and self-destruction amongst the high-brow Peking opera scene. Now, Farewell My Concubine finally makes its way to high definition home media by way of Criterion, who have released the film with both Blu-ray and 4K Ultra-HD Blu-ray releases.
L-R: Yin Zhi and Zhao Hailong in Chen Kaige’s FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE (霸王別姬). Photo courtesy of Criterion/Film Movement.
In 1924 Beijing, a young boy named Douzi (Ma Wingwei as a child, Yin Zhi as a teenager, Leslie Cheung as an adult) is abandoned by his prostitute mother at an all-boys Peking Opera troupe led by the tyrannical and abusive Master Guan (Lü Qi). Demoralized by the workload and abuse by his superiors, Douzi befriends Shitou (Fei Yang as a child, Zhao Hailong as a teenager, Zhang Fengyi as an adult), and they become inseparably close as they train together as opera performers, Douzi in dan roles (male playing female roles) and Shitou in jing roles (male roles with heavy face paint). As they grow together, they both make names for themselves as notable opera performers in Beijing, now going by Cheng Dieyi (Douzi) and Duan Xiaolu (Shitou). While the two are close, Dieyi holds deeper feelings regarding his best friend than Xiaolu does, and this tension comes to a head when Xiaolu marries former prostitute Juxian (Gong Li), whom Dieyi resents. As the landscape of China changes in the wake of The Second Sino-Japanese War, WWII, and the Cultural Revolution in the wake of the Chinese Communist Party prevailing in the Civil War, the relationships between these three are tested in ways none of them could ever imagine.
Leslie Cheung in Chen Kaige’s FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE (霸王別姬). Photo courtesy of Criterion/Film Movement.
Farewell My Concubine, frankly, is a whole lot of movie crammed into 172 minutes, but what is perhaps most impressive about that is how naturally the film flows through so many different eras of 20th century Chinese history, admittedly chaotic in its first half, something that many epics lose sight of when telling such grand stories. The characters are similarly never lost in the chaos of the film’s setting, as this is first and foremost a human story with rich, complex characters devoid of any cliche or pretentiousness. Despite itself, there’s little melodrama in the film as there simply doesn’t need to be any. When drama brings itself about naturally, whether it be interpersonally or, in many cases within Farewell My Concubine, culturally, there’s little need for exaggeration for effect. The effect is already there, and plainly made.
L-R: Zhang Fengyi and Leslie Cheung in Chen Kaige’s FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE (霸王別姬). Photo courtesy of Criterion/Film Movement.
Farewell My Concubine would be nothing without its central performances, and particularly the singular performance at the center of the film by the late, great Leslie Cheung (A better Tomorrow). The tragedy and pain exhibited by Cheung, not in the physical abuse his character suffers throughout the film, but from the emotional toll of that unreciprocated love, not just from Xiaolu, but from the world, takes on him. Like in the art of Peking opera, Cheung’s face is everything you need to understand his character, expressive and broken, in both the larger-than-life stage elements Dieyi has trained his whole life for, and the tragic nuance shown as the life and country he once knew comes crashing down around him. Pair this with the also excellent performances from Zhang Fengyi (Red Cliff) and the legendary Gong Li (Miami Vice), and it’s a love triangle made in hell, but acting sent from heaven.
Criterion’s 4K Blu-ray is understated, but highly effective. The 4K video transfer is soft, but clear, presenting easily the best way to watch the film to date. Farewell My Concubine is not a particularly “timeless” film in the traditional sense. It’s not Titanic (1997) in the sense that someone could claim that it looks like it was “shot today,” because it doesn’t. Farewell My Concubine is firmly a film from 1993, and it looks like it, and that’s not a bad thing! I think there’s grace and beauty in a film looking its age. Sometimes it feels as if older films are treated similarly to that of celebrities in that “not looking your age” is considered the goal, leading to many remasters going so far as to scrub any sign of when a film was made from its DNA, leaving us with a slick, overly denoised mess. This, combined with the dreamlike haze that makes Farewell My Concubine a naturally soft film to begin with visually, might lead some to dismiss this remaster as somewhat underwhelming in that it isn’t a grand transformation, but I find that a clean, simple remaster is all the film needed, and it only preserves the rich beauty of a now 31-year-old film.
L-R: Gong Li, Zhang Fengyi, and Leslie Cheung in Chen Kaige’s FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE (霸王別姬). Photo courtesy of Criterion/Film Movement.
Similarly, though maybe a little less interestingly, the Mandarin DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 audio track isn’t going to rock a Dolby Cinema with its unique audio mix à la Twisters (2024), but rather fills out a reserved soundscape when it needs to, particularly during the more bombastic sequences involving opera instrumentals, and the chaos of protests surrounding the Chinese Communist Revolution. I’m surprised Criterion has opted for a 5.1 mix on this film, as it’s a particularly front-heavy mix originally mixed in stereo (there is no 2.0 audio mix on this release, only 5.1), but it’s a welcome, healthy, and balanced mix nonetheless.
L-R: Leslie Cheung and Zhang Fengyi in Chen Kaige’s FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE (霸王別姬). Photo courtesy of Criterion/Film Movement.
Special features for Farewell My Concubine are present, though a little light for a contemporary Criterion Collection release. Mostly archival material, it provides a nice look into the making of the film with one great new retrospective piece with scholar Michael Berry and producer/Academy President Janet Yang, plus an expectedly good essay from Pauline Chen.
The full suite of special features are as follows.
- New conversation between Chinese-cultural-studies scholar Michael Berry and producer Janet Yang
- Documentary from 2003 on the making of the film
- Interview from 1993 with director Chen Kaige conducted by journalist Charlie Rose
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by author and scholar Pauline Chen
Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine isn’t your typical entry into the canon of queer cinema as it’s never really explicitly queer since the film revolves around one-sided queer longing more than anything else. Granted, this was enough to elicit controversy at the time of its release, being banned in Mainland China two weeks after its initial release, only being released once again after heavy censorship, and mostly out of fear that banning the internationally acclaimed film would hurt Beijing’s chances of hosting the 2000 Summer Olympics (Beijing did not host the 2000 Olympics, as Sydney hosted it, though Beijing would host in 2008 and the Winter Olympics in 2022). The film was even cut down significantly in America, though that was attributed more to Harvey Weinstein’s penchant for editing international releases at Miramax to his always inferior liking. Now, in its original glory, Farewell My Concubine comes to home media for good, with excellently faithful A/V transfers in both 4K and 1080p, and special features that definitely lean more into quality over quantity. It’s easy to recommend this release to those who love Chinese, queer, and epic cinema, but it’s genuinely hard not to recommend this release to anyone who simply loves film in general. It’s essential viewing.
Available on 4K UHD Blu-ray Combo and Blu-ray July 23rd, 2024.
For more information, head to the official The Criterion Collection Farewell My Concubine webpage.
Share this:
Categories: Films To Watch, Home Release, Home Video, Recommendation, Reviews
Leave a Reply