The Banquet

The Banquet (2006)

Directed by Feng Xiaogang

Starring Ziyi Zhang, Daniel Wu, Ge You, Ma Jingwu, Zhou Xun

Not a very good experience watching a Chinese film in a theatre that was 1/4 filled up and it didn't help that when the film began rolling, a few young Malay male audiences started to laugh at the opening scene of a few MASKed artists singing in a pretty operatic manner. I did not know whether they found it amusing or just being your average mediocre Malaysian audience who just happened to have nothing better to do than spent RM6.00 on a ticket to kill time - on a regular Wednesday afternoon at IOI mall GSC, just for the fun of it? Maybe humour is just cultural or simply contextual? Nonetheless, from the very beginning of the film, I was being served with a dish that is visually stunning and captivating - with loads of slow motion effects and stylized kung-fu fight sequences. I was thinking, "okay, looks interesting enough, let's see how the story goes..." As we move along, we are introduced to different characters in the film - Ziyi plays Empress Wan, vicious and dangerously ambitious, Daniel Wu is Prince Wu Luan, who just wants to run away and escape from the duty of being an emperor one day, Ge You the emperor, which he played it quite interestingly, Zhou Xun the lovely and forever forgiving and optimistic Qing Nu who falls head over heels for Prince Wu Luan...all these are quite 3 dimensional characters. The only one that is not so convincing was Zi Yi for I think she is a little too young for her role. I would imagine Gong Li a better choice for the role, but I would always remember Ziyi in this small film called The Road Home by Zhang Yimou. She truly stood out as a naive yet determined young village girl who strongly believes in her love for a school teacher and brave enough to fight for it. As for Banquet, I love the cinematography, but after a while, the slow mo effects sort of got to me. Nonetheless, I was very impressed with the art direction, the costume designs and the music. All in all, it did deliver as a film which is quite character and story driven. But I still prefer Zhang Yimou's approach to making films as such for I could always remember that very MOOD and the richness in COLOUR and overlaying of texture in terms of storytelling (multiple angles/ different point of views) it brought forward in HERO, a visual that is too strong to miss.