I watched Raise the Red Lantern. It's an astonishing film. It's the story of a new concubine introduced to the aging household of an aging aristocrat. The place is layered in a number of archaic family rituals and customs. The quiet drama it carries is simple, but I thought it was done very well. There's a lot of well-done omission and minimalism, not just in the story but in music and other aspects as well, that works in its favor beside the insidious guile that runs rampantly and quietly under the master's nose. But the color is the best thing.

Supple in its color, the film lavishes us with these penetrating reds of both the lanterns and the characters. They're set against the backdrop of this giant, archaic and desolate structure of a mansion, overbearing in their earthy grays and brown. And it's actually interesting that these set-ups carry the story and its themes. The brown brick walls almost seem overbearing to the faint glimpses of color we see on the characters' clothing, always weighing down on them like the customs of the patriarch.

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