Ju Dou

9/21/2026

**Summary: 8/10: a ravishing, unsentimental portrait of patriarchal cruelty and its inherited wreckage, anchored by an early, electric Gong Li performance and filmmaking so powerful it set the standard for a generation of world cinema that followed it.** There is a particular cruelty in banning a film for depicting cruelty, and China's Ministry of Culture proved as much when it tried, and failed, to withdraw Zhang Yimou's *Ju Dou* from Oscar contention after already suppressing it at home. Two officials were made to write self-criticisms for daring to submit it; Zhang himself walked away unscathed, and later suggested, dryly, that the film had offended a government "composed largely of older men" precisely because it portrayed one so damningly. The irony writes itself: a film about a