One of Chen Kaige's best work? Probably not even close. But it moved me to no end. And I'm not even a fan of the Peking theatres.
I can't really compliment Leon Lai fully on his work here. No doubt it has probably been a decade since I saw him on any screen and he has become a very competent actor, but his pronunciation in Mandarin was not accurate enough and that took me out of the immersion factor many times. And let's not even go into the traditional way of the spoken Mandarin language. But he gave a good performance nonetheless.
Zhang Ziyi in her limited role here did the best that she could to convince the audience she was capable of capturing the heart of the protagonist. But I didn't think the writing showcased her enough. Honestly, she didn't even need to be in here.
Rather, the greatest performances came from the cast surrounding the leads. All of them gave very moving and powerful performances that added so much layers to their characters. And to me, Sun Hong Lei stole every scene from beginning to the end. He should be given the starring role to this movie. Wang Xue Qi and great scenes and Chen Hong too came in with great emotional performances.
Some of the editing in the first half, mostly, I didn't quite enjoy because they seemed to make the scenes abrupt. Some dialogues were also too short in a particular scene that kind of showed the weakness in the writing.
But I thought Chen delivered where it counted. He really brought out the essence of the story and the emotions and the turmoil and torment of the characters beautifully.
Not knowing the work or the person that is Mei Lan Fang, but I was captivated by Chen's work here.
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