I was watching Curse of the Golden Flower today. I couldn't make it past the first half hour. It was just talking. People talking about how they feel and what they're doing. Yuck. It made me realize that I want the idea of 'withholding' to be carried through the entire movie. I want to see characters hiding things, speaking but obscuring their thoughts and feelings. I want the plot points to come out in spite of what the characters are doing. I think that's what I liked about Hero (by the same director Zhang Yimou). Everything's cryptic and hidden and yet the story seems to seep out through the cracks.
I think that normally psychology is used as the justification for what I'm calling "witholding." We mask the deep brooding thoughts we feel inside. But I think withholding has nothing to do with hidden subjectivity and more to do with the idea of existential "concealment" and performance as a process in which things become unconcealed.
There's also a kind of shrill quality to the film that I didn't like. I understand that the film wants to be visually sumptuous to the point of being oppressive. But when this kind of visual sense is reinforced by a script that also holds nothing back, the effect is like constant screaming. Everything is just laid "out there" asking us not to perceive or to contemplate, but to gasp in awe.
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