In fact, Chen Kaige's masterpiece is not only Farewell My Concubine, but this classic film has also become the highest peak of his and even China's films, because he has well modulated art and commerce in this film, paying equal attention to artistry and popularity. Before Farewell My Concubine, Chen Kaige had other films with literary temperament, such as Yellow Land, king of the children and Walking and Singing. The protagonist of these films is the background, with the emphasis on cultural reflection. Because neither the story nor the characters are the protagonists, these films have made great achievements in artistic substitution, but it is difficult for the general public to accept them. Then there is Farewell My Concubine, with good words and the story itself is easier to understand. Then Chen Kaige added the thinking of the Cultural Revolution to the film, which made the film have a lot of criticism. In addition, Peking Opera, as the quintessence of traditional culture, has made the film find a wide audience in many aspects and become a classic in everyone's mind.

Since then, Chen Kaige has also made literary films such as Romance and With You. However, from the text to the content, there is a lack of depth, and the characters are not as brilliant as before. The lack of critical things weakens the artistry.

As a result, Farewell My Concubine has become the highest achievement of Chen Kaige's films, but we can't deny that his other films have not been artistic because of this film. Like Yellow Land and king of the children, which achieved great success in the early days, they are still the representative works of China's film literature and art. It can only be said that Chen Kaige's personal literary expression and business story are unbalanced, and his later works always want to be artistic reflection and easy to understand and gain market recognition, which eventually leads him to lose the purity of the original work and completely pursue artistic reflection without considering the market mentality.

By the way, to sum up, Chen Kaige is still a great director in China, with strong audio-visual ability, but not good at telling stories. Nowadays, the popularity of movies has become the mainstream, and marketization and commercialization have become the main theme, which naturally brings Chen Kaige's acclimatization. However, we can't deny his previous artistic contributions, and we can't ask him to use Xiaogang Feng's or Ning Hao's comedies to achieve commercial success. After all, making commercial films is not his forte.