After a decade of international awards culminating with splashes at U.S. box offices with Hero and House of Flying Daggers, Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou is poised to mount our heights, the symbolic Chrysanthemum Terrace, with Curse of the Golden Flower/Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia, a movie breaking records in his homeland and now opening in fifteen North American cities. Though some quarters buy his “cross between a melodrama and a wuxia martial arts epic,” this latest is more than that. The physical battles are indeed stirring, in a choreographed symmetrical way even if in places too CGI, but the heart really beats, on the one hand, in décor and costuming and, on the other, in serpentine plotting out of Renaissance “Blood Theater.”

Together with many of his usual technical crew on his own co-adaptation from Cao Yu’s ‘thirties play Thunder Storm, the director posits an intricate Machiavellian tenth-century Later Tang Dynasty court. Made fairy story-like and anachronistic -- the color-coded embossed armor, and quivering push-‘em-up bosoms ubiquitous, humorous and distracting -- the tale of schemes, loves and vengeance comes near to being backseat to the sumptuous visuals of Huo Tingxiao’s production layouts and four-to-six-tiered costumes of Yee Chung Man. True to the title flower (Greek chrysos: gold, yellow) and climactic 9/9 Chong Yang Festival, gold predominates as opulence in the uniformly strong lighting, kaleidoscoped against reds and, less, pale greens and blues through translucent art glass.

If only by contrast, 2004’s Flying Daggers is a model of compactness, a three-person tale a hundred years earlier in a less corrupt Tang Dynasty, with its season-bridging final swordplay a counterpoint to the familial struggle writ large in Golden Flower in a single evening’s battle royal among gazillions.

Indeed, the current film’s storyline is so twisting and motives so devious that, not dependent on subtitles from the Mandarin, several Chinese viewers still found themselves unclear on a few relationships and outcomes. This confusion is partly because the protagonists adopt false public faces within the story but, limited to only a partial confidant each, do not have something like Iago’s soliloquies and asides to reveal truth beneath “I am not what I seem.” In the end, however, loose ends pale before the sensory energy of the whole, and viewers are carried by the tide of the total package.

Gong Li, once as much discussed for being married womanizer Zhang’s ‘90s companion as for her talent in seven of his love-story films, and now “China’s Garbo,” the “queen of Chinese cinema” as well as a social activist, portrays the Empress who organizes a coup against the Emperor (Chow Yun Fat) in Golden Flower. For three years the lover of her stepson, Crown Prince Wan (Liu We), the Empress is isolated by her position, unable to reveal herself fully to anyone. Aware that her nervous system is being fatally poisoned by the herbal cure for her anemia prescribed by Imperial Doctor Jiang (Ni Dahong), served up by his nubile daughter Chan (Li Man) and religiously insisted upon by the Emperor, she cannot verbally disclose the situation -- and Gong’s sweats, shakes, grimaces and unbound hair are inadequate to express the woman’s inner turmoil.

In spite of an easily missed one-liner about knowing his royal consort’s mind and, further, being aware of the liaison with his heir, the absolute ruler’s reasons are muddled and vaguely touch on the first wife, Wan’s mother, given out as dead but in reality simply put aside for the current advantageous political marriage. Her portrait still prominent, the discarded cheek-branded woman (Chen Jin) mysteriously shows up as a Ninja aid to her successor, as the hidden wife of Dr. Jiang, and thus as the mother of Chan, with whom Wan is carrying on a true-love affair the incestuous nature of which neither realizes. Tough as nails, this doctor’s wife will prove a paper tiger and, with her hysterical daughter, fall easily when the chips are down.

Rounding the complications are the loyal middle son Prince Jai (pop music star Jay Chou, the “Golden Flowerbed” voice of end credits), his father’s secret choice to succeed to the throne and a brave soldier just returned from northern skirmishes against the Mongols; and ignored youngest Prince Yu (Qin Junjie), seething inside with jealous hatred and ambition. Playing their public roles amidst gorgeous accoutrements, the family members pursue their cloudy agendas: physician, wife and daughter are treacherously sent away on a theoretical promotion, the Empress embroiders endless golden chrysanthemums, her husband bottles his towering rage, poor Jai is torn between the two parents, Wan impetuously follows his young love, Yu broods his takeover.

Such cross-purpose ingredients are a natural recipe for the Grand Guignol finale. And Zhang does not disappoint, even to a post-slaughter scene high above the recently blood-soaked replenished yellow flowers. If the dénouement is not as fraught with human implications as might have been in other hands, if the suffering and carnage are disembodied, the experience nevertheless works as cinema. 

(Released by Sony Pictures Classics and rated "R" for violence)