er dies, and the young widow takes over control of the winery, which has fallen on hard times. She inspires the workers to take new pride in their wine, and once again meets the man who saved and deflowered her. He now is an alcoholic, who gets drunk one night and urinates into a vat of the wine. But somehow his urine serves as a catalyst, and the vintage tastes better than ever before. All of the events up until this point in the film have had the feel of a twice-told fable, an old family story passed down from generation to generation. Then "Red Sorghum" takes an unexpected turn into realism, as World War II begins and Japanese troops invade the area, flattening the fields with forced labor from the vineyard. The workers revolt against the Japanese, and after their uprising is crushed, the Japanese order two of the local people skinned alive in front of the others. This sequence, shocking in its detail, is a dramatic change from the fable that went before. "Red Sorghum" perhaps can be read as a parable of China's development, or as a hymn in praise of the way the workers resisted the Japanese invaders. Western audiences probably are going to be more interested in the melodrama and the overwhelming visual quality of the film. It is some kind of irony that when Hollywood switched over to cheaper and faster forms of making color films, classic Technicolor equipment was dismantled and sold to China - which now makes some of the best-looking color films in the world. The cinematography in "Red Sorghum" has no desire to be subtle, or muted; it wants to splash its passionate colors all over the screen with abandon, and the sheer visual impact of the film is voluptuous. If the story is first naive and then didactic, that is one of the film's charms; Hollywood doesn't make films like this anymore, because we have forgotten how to be impressionable enough to believe them. ...
