**An excellent film.** I was really curious to see this movie, because as far as I can remember it was the first Chinese movie I saw. Before I saw it, I read a little about it, and I was quite impressed to see how the film did well in the West, and managed to infuriate Chinese Communist censors. However, I fear that I was not fully prepared for what awaited me. In fact, the film is truly brutal, in every sense of the word. Director Kaige Chen took a well-known and respected book for his film, but put all the focus on an almost visceral realism. The film is an epic that spans a large perio...