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From the opening shot, Raise the Red Lantern draws attention to its use of image. Yimou moves from the black screen of the credits to a medium close-up, or "shoulder shot," of Songlian (played by frequent Yimou leading woman, Gong Li) staring directly out from the screen. The camera stays there, transfixed by her gaze, even as she begins to talk with her mother, who remains obstinately off-screen throughout the entire shot. In and of itself, the framing of the shot is not unusual: a close-up of a film's central character hardly breaks new ground. However, because it comes as the very first shot of the film, it breaks the typical deductive progression that moves from establishing shot, medium shot, then close-up. Yimou confronts the viewer in an immediate and visceral way, with an image that would seem more suited to a television screen. That impression, though, does not last long. For as Songlian begins to speak, Yimou again frustrates common practice by refusing to show her mother--the other participant in the conversation, and a character one would assume will be of central importance throughout the film. As it happens, once Songlian is informed of her mother's fateful decision to sell her as a concubine/wife to a rich nobleman (the film takes place in pre-Maoist China), the mother disappears from her life, and the movie, forever. By having her exist only as an off-screen voice, Yimou sets up the importance of how forces outside of Songlian's control determine her life and her fate. The shot of her alone, and in such proximity, allows Yimou to illustrate Songlian's apparent strength of self; by leaving it on her, though, while the mother speaks, Yimou reveals Songlian's path is far from self-determined.

Once inside the nobleman's enclave, Yimou traps young Songlian there with a number of shots emphasizing the implacable and austere nature of the palace-cum-prison. Drab, gray, windowless stone walls rise up the height of the frame on either side, terminating in yet another impenetrable façade. Yimou frames this shot, seen early on as Songlian is still exploring her new home, in such a way that even the fairly wide avenue's that run between the buildings appear cramped and confined, dominated by the height of the insuperable walls. The use of relatively long lenses only intensifies the effect. Elsewhere, Yimou uses telephoto lenses in the film to also heighten the sense of the inescapability of Songlian's life. By combining the tell-tale z-axis foreshortening of a long lens with an unusually deep focus, Yimou stacks doorways, gates, and entrances on top of each other, underlining the number of obstacles through which Songlian, as well the other wives, must pass. The shot appears repeatedly, and each time it remains fixed there far longer than would be expected. In doing so, Yimou allows a subtle irony to emerge: so many entrances, but with so little chance of exit. Then, in a series of shots, Yimou takes the already established starkness of the enclave's stone interior, and by following Songlian as she walks through its upper reaches, surrounds her with a maze of walls, gates, and towers, again using the foreshortening of a stretched lens to make the place bear down upon her with tremendous weight. In this sequence--which includes the fastest cuts of the film, but still lingering by most standards--Yimou once more brings out subtle notes of Songlian's lack of knowledge and control over her own direction. This sense is reiterated in the frame by the juxtaposition of angles and lines, which, although the shots themselves move in a logical progression, send Songlian on a fruitless search in myriad directions.

Such meticulous work in the creation and control of Raise the Red Lantern's visual landscape allows Yimou to use well-worn techniques with renewed power and visceral interest. In one of film's most jarring sequences, Songlian is seen wandering and dazed in full shot, again through the maze of the palace's rooftops. Then, suddenly, the perspective changes, and Yimou now uses a handheld camera to create a psychological point-of-view shot for Songlian: the "House of Death" lurches and arches towards the screen in unsteady steps. Just as quickly, the film returns to third-person with Songlian stumbling forward. Then again, shaky handheld followed by studied remove. Contrasted with the careful framing of the rest of the work, these imbalanced and careening point-of-view shots seem taken from another film. However, in placing them so late, and surrounding them by such precision, these handheld moments allow Yimou to maximize their psychological effect: there is no doubt that Songlian has broken away from the order and manner of her old world. Further, by crosscutting with the staid objective perspective of the full shots, Yimou develops a collision montage that doesn't sink to the gratuitous level such combinations usually yield. Instead, the combined scene effectively, and quite forcefully, stresses the un-mendable rift Songlian has just experienced between one life and another.

None of these techniques, however, would be of any note if Zhang Yimou did not have a virtue largely absent in current film: that of patience. He allows his actor Gong Li the screentime necessary to bring out the subtle changes in Songlian's character as she processes, during the opening scene, what her life is to become. He leaves shots devoid of motion to stay fixed on the screen, enforcing the prison-like nature of the nobleman's compound. Finally, he has the patience to hold off bringing out certain cinematic tricks--like handheld camera work--until they can be used with maximum effect: the total break the moments of psychological point-of-view create within the film could not have been affected without the two hours of precision framing and shooting that precede them. By combining old techniques with new vision, Zhang Yimou proves that the filmmaker's vocabulary, happily, is still a developing one. Just as critical, though, he reminds us in Raise the Red Lantern that new worlds and bold moments come to those who have the patience to watch and wait.

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