Revised: Surviving in Farewell My Concubine

The film Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige provides a commanding view of society’s forceful impact on people and the raw human instinct to survive. It displays not only the physical implications but also the immensely psychological influence through the doomed, intertwined lives of Dieyi and Xiaolou. The film begins in 1925 until 1977, displaying the Japanese invasion of China and the Cultural Revolution. It chronicles their lives and experiences in this time period, allowing a glimpse of what hardships they endured.

At the start of the film, Dieyi’s mother attempts to give him off to the Beijing Opera school simply because she can’t afford to feed him anymore. Upon his rejection due to a sixth finger, his mother goes and gets a knife. She chops off the abhorred finger. While the boy is still bleeding, she hands him off to the officials of the school. It’s understandable why she would just hand him off: he was one too many a mouth too feed, and she couldn’t afford to split her chances of survival with him.

The boys undergo rigorous, abusive training to achieve the ultimate prize and satisfaction: being the greatest performer for the Beijing Opera and living a better life. Dieyi is given the role of a woman, the concubine in the famous opera, Farewell My Concubine, a role that he will perform for the rest of his life along with Xiaolou, who is the king in the opera. Initially, however, he always recited, “I am by nature a boy, not a girl,” incorrectly. He eventually recites the line correctly, but by doing so, he distorts his own perception: reality and the theater start to blend together. It influences the course of his life, and becomes his life. It becomes his purpose for living. He starts believing that he must play this role for the rest of his life with Xiaolou. He has no other skills; it is his only means of surviving. In a sense, Dieyi represents many people in China: many have not been fully educated, so their lives may be structured around only one path, and they have to hold onto that single pathway, which is exactly what Dieyi does, because they have nothing else to turn to.

During the Japanese invasion, Dieyi performs for the Japanese soldiers. It eventually leads to his and Xiaolou’s arrest and questioning during the Cultural Revolution. Xiaolou willingly admits that he doesn’t love Juxian because he doesn’t want to die. He was willingly to forfeit his relationship for the approval of the masses. Dieyi, on the other hand, takes his own life in the end, like the concubine in the opera. He follows the storyline to his death. His death reiterates his extreme desire to preserve the plot of Farewell My Concubine. He lives the part to the finale of the play and his life. The film vividly presents the effects of society and how it shapes people and their decisions for the sake of preservation.