The Tapestry of Sound in Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern

Ghostly voices and frenetic percussion weave a tapestry of sound over Zhang Yimou's masterful film. Naoki Tachikawa and Jiping Zhao's transcend the traditional music score with a soundscape of aural sources in Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern. It emphasizes both a secretive and overt world of emotions, also serving the film's motifs and foreshadowing.

Four mistresses live entrapped by their master's mansion eagerly awaiting the pleasures and attention that accompany a night with him. In the sequences where the master has chosen who he will sleep with, frantic percussions from his servants precede the lighting of the red lanterns. Each time the servants carry in the lanterns the drum taps and cymbals clanging herald a much anticipated foot massage for a mistress. The rhythm creates a heightened sense of each mistress's psychological state. As we come to realize the tension of jealousy between the four mistresses, the abrupt rhythms signify their anxiety and excitement in being chosen by Master Chen.

A softer rendition of this rhythm is heard from the actual foot massage tool used by the servants. In a scene with the 4th mistress Songlian's (Gong Li) foot massage her head is tilted back in subtle ecstasy. This action accompanied by the light tapping rhythm of the tool seems to ease away the tensions that the preceding frantic rhythm created. As much as these two sounds are kept distinct in their intensity, what audibly connects them is the quick pace of the rhythm.

This frantic rhythm culminates with the sound of voices in a climatic scene on the mansion rooftop. This is heard when Songlian sneaks to see the 3rd mistress who is condemned and chained up in the cell. When she discovers the 3rd mistress has been executed she backs away screaming "murderers", as ghostly voices cue in stabbing the silence of the scene and rupturing the frantic rhythm. The combined sounds recollect an association of the rhythms to the servants carrying in the lanterns, just as they carried the 3rd mistress to the cell and carried Songlian away from it. The voices heard are foreshadowed in the scene where Songlian's servant's secret lanterns are burned.

The Voices and rhythms accompany a thematic connection of secrets revealed and hope destroyed. Voices are linked to Songlian revealing secrets when she discovers her servant's lanterns and the 3rd mistress's illicit affair. This results in the burning of the lanterns and imprisoning the mistress, both of which are customs of the household. Keeping with tradition in both events is what destroys hope in the sense that the women of the mansion will never be free of a master's dominance. Here the rhythms can be linked to household tradition as they are repetitively heard as the servants carry in the lanterns.

The voices have an ambient presence that emits a ghostly sound and this relates to the frequent mention of the mansion being haunted. It also ties to the death of the 3rd mistress, fittingly a singer, whom the servants believe returns to haunt them. The 3rd mistress's voice is heard on a record Songlian plays in the haunting scene, this is foreshadowed earlier in a scene during a game as the same record plays when Songlian first notices the 3rd mistress's illicit affair.

The rhythms, voices and record playing, along with the character, FeiPu's rooftop flute playing are the only elements used to orchestrate the sound design. This limited use of sound is relevant to the mansion as a setting that isolates the characters from a world outside. Since the entirety of the film is set in the mansion, the only sounds we hear are basically the only sounds the characters hear, or in a sense feel.

Additional Chinese Cinema Resources:

Personal Revolutions from China's 5th Generation Filmmakers by Jason Cangialosi
www.sensesofcinema.com - Smart Content on Zhang Yimou and Chinese Cinema
asianfilms.org - A spectacular section on Films from China
www.amusedreviews.com - Excellent Essay on Zhang Yimou and Chinese Cinema
www.thingsasian.com - Review of Raise the Red Lantern by Celeste Heiter