Qiu Ju Goes To Court

Gong Li is transformed into a frumpy, down-to-earth, silly yet adorably stubborn village woman in movie The Story of Qiu Ju by Zhang Yi Mou (1992), very unlike her performances in other movies of Zhang Yi Mou’s that portray her in roles that are highly sensual, feminine and tragically themed.



One stark difference of this movie would be the use of hidden cameras to film the movie, the sceneries and landscapes are not as exotic of those presented in Ju Dou (1990) and Raise The Red Lantern (1991), but with more of a naturalistic touch to the movie, since the characters with exception of the main stars are all non-actors. The life in rural areas and on the city streets are truthfully depicted, the hues of the movie takes on gentler and more realistic hues, less intensive and not as bold compared to Ju Dou (1990) and Raise The Red Lantern (1991). Although the colours presented in those two movies were a feat for the eyes, I personally find The Story of Qiu Ju closer to the impression I have of China, which is not as the “exotic” China many Westerners have come to stereotyped of.

Qiu Ju is stubborn as a mule in the movie, to which I found her stubbornness silly, yet endearing at the same time too. I expected her to give up in the pursuit for her justice since the path was fraught with difficulties, but she pressed on in the end. She realised that the village chief was not as bad as what she thought of him to be after he rendered great service in helping her deliver her son, yet at the movie’s end, with the twist of story, her realisation was too late.

Her lines to the officer, “抓走了，我就是要个说法嘛，我就没让他抓人，他怎么把人抓走了？” (loosely translated as “the chief is taken away, I only wanted a statement, I didn’t allow them to take him away, how could they do so?”) shows her being unaware of the consequences her actions could bring, which was amplified at the end with a close up shot of her face in anguish as she runs off to find the village chief. At this point of time, I could not help but to feel a sense of…”oh man.”


References:
Comedy and Culture - by Alan A. Stone
The Story of Qiu Ju- By Roger Ebert
Qiu Ju Goes to Court (Ending) - Youtube