Farewell My Concubine satirizes the constraints of old social politics on the freedom of love, and at the same time it also severely attacks the cruel exploitation of feudal society with cold weapons.
The film revolves around the joys and sorrows of two Peking opera actors for half a century, showing their thinking and understanding of traditional culture, people's living conditions and human nature.
In 1993, the film won the Palme d'Or, the highest award at the Cannes International Film Festival in France, becoming the first Chinese film to win this honor. In addition, the film also won the American Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, International It has won many international awards including the Federation of Film Critics Award, and is the only Chinese-language film to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes International Film Festival and the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the same time. In 1994, Leslie Cheung won the 4th China Film and Performing Arts Society Special Contribution Award for this film. In 2005, "Farewell My Concubine" was selected as one of the "100 Best Movies in Global History" by Time Magazine.
Extended information
Creative background:
In 1988, when Chen Kaige attended the film festival, Xu Feng took the initiative to ask him to meet and made a special trip with Li Bihua's novel. When I met him, I told him that it was Chen Kaige who could make such a movie. The ending in the old version of Li Bihua's original novel is that Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou met in a bathroom in Hong Kong a few years later. Both of them were naked. They talked frankly to each other, looked back on their past, and were filled with emotion. Then they went out and went their separate ways. . Chen Kaige told Li Bihua that the ending had to be changed.
The theme of "Farewell My Concubine" is about human nature - obsession and betrayal. Before the creation, Chen Kaige emphasized to the two screenwriters not to ideologicalize the characters. Who should the characters be? Just let him be who he is.
Baidu Encyclopedia - Farewell My Concubine