1920年代末の中国山東省。 私（語り手）の祖母・九児（チウアル）は、ラバ1頭で父に売られ、親子ほど年の離れた造り酒屋の男の元に嫁ぐことになる。御輿で嫁入りに向かう途中、彼女 は強盗たちに襲われるが、御輿の担ぎ手・余占鰲（ユイチャンアオ）に救われる。実家に里帰りして、再び嫁ぎ先に向かう道すがら、再び強盗が彼女を襲うが、 その正体は余占鰲だった。お互いに惹かれあっていた2人は、コーリャン畑で結ばれることになる。やがて夫が行方不明となり、造り酒屋を継いだ九児は余と結婚。コーリャン畑で結ばれた日に身ごもった子供・豆官（トウコアン）も生まれ、幸せな日々が続くのだが、やがてそこに日本軍が侵攻してくる……。The film takes place in a rural village in China's eastern province of Shandong in the 1930s. It is narrated from the point of view of the protagonist’s grandson, who reminisces about his grandmother, Jiu'er. She was a poor girl who was sent by her parents into a pre-arranged marriage with an older man. This man, who owned a distillery, suffered from leprosy.
The girl places a pair of scissors in her blouse before traveling by sedan chair to meet her husband, supposedly to protect her from any of the leper's advances. As her wedding party, consisting of workers from the distillery and one hired sedan carrier, crosses a field of sorghum, it is attacked by a bandit with a pistol.
One member of her party, the hired member, fights off the assailant, who turns out to have a fake pistol, and a series of subtly flirtatious looks are exchanged. After she reaches the winery, the man disappears. He returns to the screen while Jiu'er is returning from her parents' house. We see him wearing the same mask as the man who attacked them the day before. He kidnaps Jiu'er and after a short chase, reveals his identity. He then clears some sorghum and they make love.
After the leper was mysteriously murdered, the young widow takes over the distillery, which has fallen on hard times. She inspires the workers to take new pride in their wine, and once again meets the man who saved her life and then deflowered her. He arrives drunk and tries to claim her, telling the distillery workers how he deflowered her and that he is going to sleep in her room, but she tosses him out and he makes a fool of himself in his drunken rudeness. He sleeps in a liquor vat for three days, while the bandits kidnapped Jiu'er and asked for ransom, which the distillery workers paid. The bandits did not rape her because she told them she had slept with her deceased husband, the leper.
Later, the man who deflowered her comes back again, when they make the first batch of liquor. He takes three vats of the liquor and urinates in them, to the shock and sadness of the employees. He tells them (and the widow in particular) to "wait and see." He then carries her off and it is implied he again makes love with her. He meant it to anger Jiu'er, but somehow his urine makes the liquor taste better than ever before. The longtime distiller, Luohan, leaves in disgust, presumably because of her affair with the hired bearer and the resultant bastard son, the narrator's father.
The style of the film shifts from fable to realism when World War II begins and Japanese troops invade the area. The Japanese soldiers order forced laborers to flatten the sorghum fields. The widow Jiu'er and the winery workers are among the forced laborers. They then order a butcher to skin the bandit alive. The butcher resists, but is given a choice of death or skinning, as a reminder to the laborers not to resist. The butcher is near to doing it, and attempts to attack a Japanese soldier. He is machine gunned, and the butcher assistant is given the task, to skin Luohan, the distillery worker, lest he himself be skinned. He does the skinning, and loses his mind. The narrator then identifies many atrocities of the Japanese during the war and notes Luohan as a member of the Communist resistance.
They then have a liquor tasting ritual where they celebrate Luohan and his liquor, where Jiu'er recommends the distillery workers avenge his death. All of the distillery workers toast with the liquor, as does Jiu'er's son, the narrator's father, with the same song that Luohan sung at other rituals. In the early dawn, they set an ambush and take liquor with them to use as a fire bomb, which is urinated in by Jiu'er's son. Later, the boy runs back to the distillery and tells his mom the men are hungry. She arrives in time to be machine-gunned by the Japanese. The ambush is a noble disaster, with cannons misfiring and killing some of the ambushers but their homemade liquor grenades destroy the Japanese trucks and troops, as well as most of the distillers. In the end, there is nothing but scenes of death, with the narrator's grandfather and father observing a red eclipse symbolic of the death and destruction and the red color of the liquor. The narrator's father is left chanting a prayer for his mother to rise to heaven at the close of the film.
Sunairi: 凄い映画でした。ビデオ屋で表紙を見ただけでビビびっと来ました。なんか凄そうな。そしてやはり凄かった。乱暴で、荒々しく、そして力強く、美しく、いえ、本当に美しく、非常に情緒的に。赤いコーリャン、もろこし畑の中で誘惑、そして交わり。コンリーは若く少年のような眼差し。最初っから最後まで情熱が迸る映画です。完結も簡潔で、切れがいい。ほら、ぎらぎらした日っていう表現があるじゃないですか、チャン・イーモウの「紅いコーリャン」はそんな感じです。ぎらぎらしています。チャン・イーモウ、天才ですね。僕は『紅夢』と『活きる』を見たことがあります。大学の時見たけど、品がいい歴史とそのうちに見える混沌とした文化か鮮やかに出ていて、歴史物でもこんないいものでいいんだと思ったことを覚えています。『活きる』 では、コンリー（英語ではGong Li、ゴング・リーと言うのです）が強いそして心がある母親役で、可愛らしい子供の事をlittle bun(饅頭/マントウ)と呼びます。その呼び方がなんとも、可愛いというか、愛らしいというか、なんかこの映画をよく象徴していたと思いました。
sunairi: What a movie! When I saw the DVD cover of this film, something strong and exciting could be seen. The red cover gave me a spice of violence, which it did have and the traumatic-epic it would have from the way this man and the little boy standing in front of seemingly mother-like figure in red, red bloodly mess.
However, I wouldn't have thought like horror, like coarce American Horror, because it is Zhang Yimou, the director of this film. I have seen, "Raise the Red Lantern" and "To Live." They both had gracefull ways of telling historical stories, also both featuring Gong Li, who is a main actress and the core of the story of "Red Sorghum." She looks much younger than two films I have seen. She is almost a boy-like, whether it was an acting........since she was heading to her rich husband, whom she was sold to by her father, so she was a virgin not knowing man..............so she was like a boy as she was acting, and the acting was so convincng dipicting that phase of life for young girls and beautiful in that glim of boyish innocence.
This movie is so strong, passionate, beautiful and simple in its telling as well as its way of being filmed. Camera panns the emotional tone through the field of Red Sorghum. Reminding me of "Sunflower (I Girasoli)" by Vittorio De Sica, the landscape is the tone of emotion, in this film, the red, the Chinese red, blood red, passion red, and red that is strongest color of all.
It kind of suddenly ends with bombing the Japanese army and there happens a sharp irony with the mother getting killed. Coming from a little boy, he sings a song for a mother in a all-knowing manner and wit about his farewell with strength to live. It amazes me how a child can grow in a such a environment with a life in the factory/shop of wine, with workers, and a specifically humble environment and it shows in such small segment and it makes sense at the end. How simple and affective Zhang Yimou's story is. It burns images in your eyes and molds you later in your heart.
チャン・イーモウ作品。
- 『紅いコーリャン』（『紅高梁』、Red Sorghum, 1987）
- 『ハイジャック/台湾海峡緊急指令』（『代號美洲豹』、Code Name Cougar,1988）
- 『菊豆（チュイトウ）』（『菊豆』、Judo, 1990）
- 『紅夢』（『大紅灯篭高高掛』、Raise The Red Lantern, 1991）
- 『秋菊の物語』（『秋菊打官司』、The Story of QIU JU, 1992）
- 『活きる』（『活着』、To Live, 1994）
- 『上海ルージュ』（『揺啊揺！揺到外婆橋』、Shanghai Triad, 1995）
- 『キープ・クール』（『有話好好説』、Keep Cool,1997）
- 『あの子を探して』（『一個都不能少』、Not One Less, 1997）
- 『初恋のきた道』（『我的父親母親』、The Road Home, 1999）
- 『至福のとき』（『幸福時光』、Happy Time, 2000）
- 『HERO』（『英雄』、Hero,2002）
- 『LOVERS』（『十面埋伏』、House of Flying Daggers, 2004）
- 『単騎、千里を走る。』（『千里走単騎』、Riding Alone For Thousands of Miles,2006）
- 『王妃の紋章』（『満城尽帯黄金甲』、Curse of The Golden Flower,2006）
