THE BANQUET (China, 2006)
Directed by: Feng Xiaogang
Starring: Zhang Ziyi, Daniel Wu, Ge You, Zhou Xun

It’s 907 AD and ruthless warlords are carving up the Chinese empire into bloody fiefdoms while the Imperial household lies paralyzed by internal corruption. The Emperor has been murdered by his brother (Ge You), and the Empress (Zhang Ziyi) is given mere minutes to make up her mind: will she die at the hands of the man who killed her husband or will she kiss his hands, still wet with the Emperor’s blood and become his wife? She chooses marriage and enters a deadly chess game with the paranoid Emperor who’s as volatile as nitroglycerin. Things get worse when the Crown Prince (Daniel Wu) returns to the palace. He had retired from the vile world of politics to a peaceful mime colony in Southern China, but assassins have slaughtered his entourage and he watches in helpless horror as his entire life narrows to one option: revenge.

This darkly gleaming Chinese epic reunites the behind-the-scenes team from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to adapt Hamlet to the big screen. It’s a strange and extravagant spectacle of sin, balletic violence and bloodthirsty politics starring Zhang Ziyi (Memoirs of a Geisha, House of Flying Daggers) as Gertrude, Hong Kong’s Daniel Wu as Hamlet and arthouse fave, Zhou Xun (Suzhou River, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress) as Ophelia. The design is by Academy-Award-winning art director, Tim Yip, the score is composed by Grammy and Academy-Award-winning composer, Tan Dun (who also wrote the music for Hero), and the beautifully brutal action is choreographed by Yuen Wo-ping (The Matrix, Kill Bill, Fearless).

As these Shakespearean serpents slither through their charcoal black and arterial red royal palace, backs broken beneath the weight of their obligations, you’ll start to feel1 that this is the way Hamlet was always meant to be seen: hanging from wires and wrapped in miles of billowing silk.