Zhang Yimou lets his imagination fly...to a wall

After twenty years of making movies about the poor country life in China, director Zhang Yimou has switched to portraying ancient, affluent China, albeit in an unusual way, in his latest flick 'Curse of the Golden City'.

Director Zhang Yimou says his two goals in making the film were to use every penny of the 4.5 million Dollars investment to create a splendid visual feast and to coach the actors and actresses into accurately portraying the bloody, dirty and brutal palace intrigue. Fortunately he accomplishes both by the end of the movie. This however, does not divert the audience from the fact that: Director Zhang Yimou's creativity is dead.

Being short of imagination, Zhang had to copy the whole plot from a widely known drama "Thunder Storm" by Cao Yu. He changes Cao's theme of "conflicts in a big family" into "intrigue in a royal family", allowing family fights to result in military butchering. Zhang showed such little creativity in the whole plot that criticisms of the movie's weak storyline started as soon as its premiere ended. Killers walk through the bright palace without being afraid of the guards, royalty address each other in confusing names; the empress sews a scarf for every soldier as a symbol of rebellion, making such a fuss that almost everyone in the palace knows the secret…

In order to whitewash his deficiencies, Zhang exaggerates almost everything in the story to stimulate the audience, which results in something that looks like an expensive commercial.

The most eye-popping parts of the movie worth mentioning are the actress' cleavages. Almost all the women in the movie wear revealing costumes. From the empress to the maids, women show off their assets in incredibly tight dresses, with their breasts ready to pop out. Although many netizens criticized the movie for its busty wardrobe, many men watched the movie for the skin.

Actress Gong Li, who starred as the empress , defended the wardrobe choices. She says the costumes were designed after the fashions of the Tang Dynasty during which the movie is set.

This is a perfect example of Zhang exaggerating as much as possible to enhance the movie.. In addition, the emperor and empresses' robes are made of real gold, and the screen is constantly filled with gold flowers and soldiers. Is the visual feast enough to distract the audience from Zhang's adaptation of the storyline? He'd better hope so.