Symbolism In Red Sorghum

“Red Sorghum (1987)” directed by Yimou Zhang, the movie centers on Jiuer who is forced to marry an ill and old man, her marriage is forcedly arranged by her father. As during the ancient Chinese culture, most women did not have the freedom to choose their own marriage, and women 's marriage seemed to be a tool for a family to exchange money. So marriage was a tragedy to women. In the movie, Jiuer’s husband is dead because of the infectious disease, so she takes control over her husband’s business. She meets Wen Jiang, who is her true love. In the movie, Zhang uses red to express not only the movie’s theme and depict characters, but red also reflect the conversion of time and space, and promote the expression of emotion. Red, which is one of the most powerful and …show more content…
Although there is not much violence is shown in the movie, Zhang successfully uses red to represent the merciless of Japanese War. Chinese people are torturous in the Japanese War. As shown in figure 5, after slaughtering the cattle, the two Chinese butchers slice off the cattle’s skin, put the bloody cattle’s skin on Japanese’s car, and Japanese army wants the two butchers to slice off a Chinese people’s skin, but they refused, the consequence of their rejection is dead. The color of the bloody cattle’s skin matches with the Japanese flag, this red cattle skin is the symbol of Chinese people, who is tortured atrociously by the Japanese army. Thus, the red at this moment represents bloodiness, suffering, and sadness. Furthermore, in figure 6, the whole space is full of blood red, yellow tone, has stimulated the audience 's vision and emotion. When Jiuer devotes her life to against Japanese war, Zhang uses the red sunlight to present this glory moment of Jiuer who sacrifices herself for her family and country. Jiuer’s husband and son stand by her dead body, they do not ululate for their sadness, but the red sunlight expresses their