REVIEW: Christian Bale May Be the Star, But Zhang Yimou Puts Women at Heart of Flowers of War

The great Fifth Generation filmmaker Zhang Yimou has gone from having films like Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern banned in his homeland of China to directing the lavish opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, his more recent work taking place in the safer territory of the grandiose historical melodrama of Curse of the Golden Flower and the Nicholas Sparks-worthy sentimentality of Under the Hawthorn Tree. Zhang has insisted that he's not interested in politics, a tack that certainly seems to have its benefits: With an estimated budget of around $90 million, The Flowers of War is one of the most, if not the most, expensive Chinese production to date, it stars Christian Bale and it's China's Oscar submission. But that doesn't mean that Zhang's latest output should be dismissed offhand as nationalist propaganda.
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