"THE WOODEN MAN'S BRIDE"

“The Wooden Man’s Bride” is a remaindered DVD, tout cheap from the Internet remainder houses such as Hamilton and Daedalus. It is one of a genre I call “Chinese Westerns,” because they are about life along the Mongollian border in the 19th century where the people live in adobe houses behind big log gates and are occasionally raided by warrior renegades. Oddly, the stories are almost always about women (I read that today’s Chinese women commit suicide at the rate of every four minutes.) who fight the system. The stories are often from legends. Sometimes they sound a bit like Grimm or Anderson. Cinderella.

In this one a bride is being carried via a chair on a servant’s back and then on a dromedary (like a big woolly camel -- feet like platters) from her birth home (poor) to a marriage (wealthy). Servants have been sent to bring her -- a strong man to carry her and a resourceful woman to make sure things are done right. Servants are big in these stories, a little like the Mexicans in John Wayne SW epics.

On the way “The Whirlwind Gang” comes down on them and grabs up both the sturdy man and the bride. (They ride wonderful mustang horses like those of early Native Americans.) These events are so poignantly beautiful that any lover of dunes and long landscapes will weep. Everything is ivory (the outlaws wear unbleached cotton with angora goat vests, wool inside) except the bride who is in eye-stabbingly saturated crimson.

In the camp of the Whirlwinds, the leader (noble and cultured) sets a test of bravery for the sturdy man and he passes, so he and the bride go on to her new home. In that home the designated bridegroom has gotten all excited and intended to attack the gang, but he blundered and by accident killed himself.

His mother never blunders. In China all mothers-in-law are dowager empresses. She adheres strictly to the code. This girl has been bought, she is now the wife, and a surrogate husband is constructed of wood. He’s a blockhead in the most literal sense.

Things go on from there. The sturdy man becomes the new tofu maker. Tofu is the source of the dowager’s wealth and watching this 19th century technology is in itself fascinating. Again, all is cream and ivory, even the tofu.

Houses of this period and place are like Greek stages: a very patterned courtyard, platforms and walkways defined by timbers and stone, screens that open rooms into prosceniums, basic but gracefully made furniture that is carried around as needed. The huge red lanterns that were the motif of “Raise the Red Lantern” are here as well as the white lanterns of death. (In fact, this set looks very similar -- might be the same one.) The story procedes as anyone who knows human behavior would expect.

There is an echo of foot-binding and somehow a plot point goes missing. I’m pretty sure there was a pregnancy in there somehow but it disappeared without resolution. Of course, we who watch Hollywood movies are used to this!

There is none of the kung fu high-wire leaping -- not even any sword fights -- and no bamboo grows in this part of the world. The landscape is a study in erosion and drought, which makes it eerily relevant in Montana right now, and also echoes Middle Eastern scenes. Beyond that, it is a portrayal of a time when an old rigid system is being broken up from within because it doesn’t fit human lives and has lost the force it needs to impose it on them, Procrustes-style as the Greeks would say. Of course, there’s always that feminist angle. But at the same time a nostalgia for a frontier, a setting in which the strong can exult and expand.

Other movies along these lines are “Raise the Red Lantern,” “Farewell, my Concubine” (much more recent in time), “Xiu Xiu, Sent-down Girl” (Communist revolution), and others. “Crouching Tiger, etc.” is a very baroque example of a basically ascetic style, which may lend it some of its power.

Sometimes I kick myself for not keeping a little journal of movies seen, because I know there are more of considerable power. What the heck was the name of the one about the young wife whose husband was kicked in the family jewels by their overlord and who went in a persistent search for justice to the area committee? Again that wonderful ivory and scarlet color scheme -- with the red provided by strings of peppers drying.

Oh, this is a wonderful world to explore. I would love to see a staging of “Antigone” translated to early China. And personally I need the moral endorsement of stubborn women in search of justice and survival.