"The Golden Era" 

A poster of "The Golden Era"

 

"The Golden Era," a three-hour epic, directed by Ann Hui, is centered on the life story of Xiao Hong, a female writer in the era of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression before the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949. After drifting around China for years, the legendary Xiao Hong, whose real name was Zhang Naiying, died at the age of 30 in early 1942 during the chaos of wartime after a brief life marked with some painful love affairs. Hui directed the art house biopic, recruiting talented actors Tang Wei and Feng Shaofeng to the cast of the sprawling historical biopic that is her most expensive and ambitious project yet. "The Golden Era" is a documentary-like experimental attempt to adopt some new approaches to motion picture storytelling, such as when actors in character suddenly talk to the camera while on screen, as if they were talking to audiences as narrator. The film also tries to mix time and space, and leaves space for audiences to imagine and form ideas and images of Xiao Hong. Many original texts written by Xiao Hong herself are integrated into the script and there's a pedantic recital of dates and locations. "The Golden Era" also perfectly portrays a special era of a special group of people, Chinese litterateurs struggling to maintain their freedom and their ideals in chaotic times, which resonated well with audience feelings.

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