Chinese people like red because it represents joy, enthusiasm and warmth. Every good day or big event must be overwhelming red.
But sometimes, red also represents terror, depression and indifference. "High Red Lanterns" fully shows the other side of red.
In the future palace fight dramas, the struggle for power and profit, the open and secret struggle, the competition for favor, false pregnancy, the good-natured and evil-minded, the sisters turning their faces... You can find shadows in this early film.
In the movie, the heroine Song Lian was originally a college student. Her father died of illness and had to drop out of school. Her greedy stepmother married her to the wealthy Chen family as the fourth wife.
I have to say, rich people just follow the rules.
In the Chen family, Mr. Chen "turned over the brand" like the emperor of the Qing Dynasty.
If Mr. Chen is going to spend the night with the wife of the hospital tonight, then the courtyard will be covered with red and big lanterns from the inside to the outside, called "lighting the lanterns".
The next day, Mr. Chen woke up, and after he was satisfied to leave, he turned off the light, which is called "turning off the light".
When the lamp is lit, the wife of this hospital can also enjoy the foot-beating service, and an old lady will beat the wife's feet. It is said that this way can better serve the master at night. After all, Master Chen believes that the most important thing for a woman is her feet.
And the wife who is not lit can not enjoy the foot-thumping service that day.
The next day, the lady who lit the lamp last night was able to order her favorite dishes.
If the wife of any hospital does something wrong, the lanterns in her courtyard will be covered with black cloth, and they will lose the qualification to "light the lights", and the master will not go to her house for the night. This is called "blocking the lights", which is considered a severe punishment. .
Lighting the lights, turning off the lights, smashing the feet, ordering food, and closing the lights, this is the rule left by the ancestors of the Chen family.
The Chen family still has some rules, such as rules for eating, rules for punishment, and rules after pregnancy. I'm afraid that the master has rules when he sleeps at night.
These are all rules that I don't know which bastard ancestor of the Chen family set.
Judging from the portraits of ancestors hanging around the restaurant in the movie, the ancestors of the Chen family wore Ming Dynasty official uniforms and Qing Dynasty official uniforms. It seems that they were all high-ranking officials. Power and the rules of men.
cannibalism rules.
There is also a rule in the Chen family. If any concubine does something unclean, she will be locked in the small dark room on the roof of the compound. In the end, she will either be killed or committed suicide. . In the last generation, two aunties died here. In this generation, the third wife also died in the small dark room because of an affair with Dr. Gao.
Small house, I don't know how many women died.
Song Lian once said: "I just don't understand. In this courtyard, what do people look like? They look like dogs, cats, mice. They look like everything, but they don't look like people."
This reminds me of Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman.
Song Lian really went crazy in the end. She saw the death of the third wife in the little black room and kept shouting, "You kill people, you kill people!"
Isn't that crazy talk?
The master said, "What did you see? What did you see? Nonsense, what did you see? You didn't see anything! You are crazy, you are crazy."
Whether it's crazy or not, if the lord says you're crazy, you're crazy. Master Chen never appeared in front of the camera, because the man stared at everything.
There are three endings for the women in the Chen family, either to the death of the eldest wife, the death of the third wife, or the spiritual death of the fourth wife.
The fifth wife, who just started the movie at the end, doesn't know what kind of ending it will be.
People are alive, who is not the concubine of this world?
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