Rouge

I've read for the first time about the movie Red Sorghum in some old reviews in the French media from the end of the 80s. The expression of a long time cultural and - as it was the case in the 60s - political as well fascination on the axis Paris-Peking/Beijing. The narrative have to do with some political symbols - the life of a young woman - from the Chinese Eastern province of Shandong, during the second Sino-Japanese war. The story is narrated from the point of view of the protagonist's grandson.

Since I've read about by now I really wanted to see this movie. I was not able to think about images, and was focused only on the story in itself. Now, after I saw it I could say that I was extremely impressed about the power of the images, but found the narrative completely irrelevant. Sometimes even ridiculous - like, for example, when the Chinese peasants are attacking the Japanese trucks with homemade wine "grenades". The cruelty of the scenes describing the confrontation between the Japanese military and the Chinese peasants is testimony - beyond of some realities of the time - not only of the Cold War, but of the old, present and future rivalries from the Asian continent.

But, again, the images. Long focus on the windy sorghum fields. The close-ups of the red wine poured into cups. The red sky with, again, the leaves of sorghum in the wind. Only to have these images, and it was enough to make a movie out of it. And, just realized another French-Chinese connection: between the force of these natural images on the run and the description of nature from Sartre's La Nausée.