This sequence, shocking in its detail, is a dramatic change from the fable that went before.WHEN THE NOBEL PRIZE in Literature is awarded, commentators often wonder if it was given to recognize the quality of the author's writing or for other reasons: jockeying within the committee, a desire to acknowledge a particular genre or style’s importance, the wish to make a political statement - or all of the above. The workers revolt against the Japanese, and after their uprising is crushed, the Japanese order two of the local people skinned alive in front of the others. Then 'Red Sorghum' takes an unexpected turn into realism, as World War II begins and Japanese troops invade the area, flattening the fields with forced labor from the vineyard. But somehow his urine serves as a catalyst, and the vintage tastes better than ever before.Īll of the events up until this point in the film have had the feel of a twice-told fable, an old family story passed down from generation to generation. He now is an alcoholic, who gets drunk one night and urinates into a vat of the wine. She inspires the workers to take new pride in their wine, and once again meets the man who saved and deflowered her. The leper dies, and the young widow takes over control of the winery, which has fallen on hard times. But she is grateful to him for having saved her life, and they make love. One of her escorts fights off the assailant, and then slips away into the fields - only to accost her the next day in a raid of his own. As her party makes its way through a field of sorghum, it is attacked by bandits. The girl thoughtfully slips a pair of scissors into her blouse before being borne off by sedan chair to meet her husband.

The good news was that he owned a vineyard.

She was, we learn, a poor girl who in the late 1920s was sent by her parents into a pre-arranged marriage with a much older man. 'Red Sorghum' begins as a memory, being told by an unseen narrator, of his grandmother.

The mainline Chinese movie market is enormous (18 studios supply 140 films a year, attracting 25 billion admissions), but a deliberate effort to produce world-class cinema is being made mostly at Xi'an (rhymes with 'shan'). It also carries on its shoulders the hopes of the Xi'an Film Studio, birthplace of a tentative 'new wave' of Chinese filmmaking. Playing at the Music Box through Saturday, it arrives decorated with the Golden Bear, the highest award of the 1988 Berlin Film Festival.

Red sorghum book review