Restorations · Review ·
Raise the Red Lantern, restored
The critic
(4.5 out of 5)★★★★½
A 35-year-old film that looks as if it was lit yesterday. Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern turns one household custom into a study of power, and the new 4K restoration makes the colour the plot, as critics have long said it is.
It is controlled, closed and unhurried, so it suits viewers who want a portrait of a system more than a plot that keeps twisting. Little White Lies, Empire and the 1992 critics largely agree on its beauty and its cruelty; a minority found it all arrangement.