Full River Red (Zhang Yimou) / Under the Light (Zhang Yimou)

Zhang’s visually dazzling two-fer ranges from the birth of a nation (Full River Red) to the state of a nation (Under the Light). FRR reinvigorates unifying patriotic mythology through a historical mystery genre Wuxia (martial arts adventure) about a labyrinthine conspiracy at the center of tribal conflicts. UtL follows the police procedural genre to trace the economically multi-layered corruption that renders a society ineffective (wuxiao).

Zhang’s inventive imagery and his emphasis on spiritual intrigue elevates these works beyond genre and propaganda. In both films, romantic and familial entanglements complicate and make compelling each character’s varying sense of duty to the cause of personal and national reform.

Zhang uses location expressively and expressionistically (like Fritz Lang).

The overhead shots and shadowy maze-like feudal palace in FRR open up to the ominously overcast wide world measured to its horizon by an unmoving army. Cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding’s (Curse of the Golden Flower) purple and blue interior color scheme highlighting each facet of the intrigue extends to the exterior’s indigo atmosphere and establishes the expansive stakes.

The camera in UtL follows investigators as they travel through the varied settings of Chongqing city on vertically (class-stratified) moving lifts and stacked overpasses and horizontally (urban sprawl) on foot or in police motorcades. Cinematographer Pan Luo (The Battle of Lake Changjin II) integrates the prismatic lighting effect of the futuristic metropolis to provide an in-lens sense of a cover-up’s obfuscation but also to externalize—as a fractured rainbow—the covenantal will to expose it.

If it weren’t for Rebel Moon, these two films would be the year’s peak visual achievements.