By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Lu Chuan
Starring: Chang Chen | Cuckoo He | Daniel Wu | Huo Siyan | Li Qi | Liu Ye | Nie Yuan | Qin Lan | Sha Yi | Tao Zeru
Original language title: Wang de cheng yan
Country: china
Year: 2013
Running time: 120
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1919137/combined
Kyle says: “THE LAST SUPPER screened in its U.S. Premiere at the New York Asian Film Festival. According to various reports, the SARFT (State Administration for Radio, Film and Television), otherwise known as the Chinese censors, worked themselves into a tizzy over this depiction of the ambiguity of absolute power, perhaps just shy of totalitarian tyranny. Yet it is an actual co- ipporoduction among the three different Chinas, including the casting of major actors from each of the three political entities as three once-upon-a-time comrades vying for supreme power in the third century B.C.E.
“As the narrative commences, the first Han Emperor, Liu Bang (Mainland actor Liu Ye), is nearing the end of his life, fearful of death, murder, his subjects and his dreams. Flashbacks reveal the tale of struggles for power that become literally a dance of death among warring generals Liu Bang and Lord Xiang Yu (Hong Kong actor Daniel Wu), and Han Xin (Taiwan actor Chang Chen), a general who had previously served Xiang Yu but is later lured into a trap, tried and executed for treason, and his head presented to Liu Bang at the end of his life. The head is intended to be a gift that will please Liu Bang, but it does not — much as the presentation of Pompey’s head to Julius Caesar by King Ptolemy was intended to please him, but it didn’t.
“The title refers to a story repeated throughout Chinese literature and popular culture called ‘The Feast at Hong Gate,’ culminating a power struggle for political supremacy in 206 B.C.E. The complicated plot will likely be incomprehensible to most viewers, unfamiliar with this era of Chinese history, but the power struggles, warring factions, betrayals, battles and treachery will be comfortably familiar to genre mavens, who will undoubtedly love every loud gory minute.
“Writer and director Lu Chuan demonstrates remarkable control over the vast panoramas of his story, with special praise due the cinematography by Li Zhang and Ma Cheng, costume design by Chen Xue-bing and Zhong Jia-ni, the editing by Liu Yijia and Cui Liang, and the music score by Liu Tong, with its evocations of Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki’s experiments in extended sonic possibilities of instrumentation, luxurious choral laments for public executions, and vivid counterpoint of percussion with the sounds of swords clashing against shields in battle scenes. 4 cats
“Wednesday, July 10, 2013, New York Asian Film Festival at the Walter Reade Theater, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York.”