Wives and Concubines, a novel written by Su Tong, expresses the tragedy of a woman, the corruption of a system, and the struggle for some desires. According to the adaptation principles of creativity and allegorization, Zhang Yimou dissociated the narrative time and space from the background of social history, constructed a close and stable space-time cage, and completed allegorized rewriting for the original work under post-colonial context. Success of this film not only lies in the connotation provided by the original work, but also in the director's keen perception for cultural context as well as the accurate audience and theme positioning. Through creative adaptation, the director constructed the bizarre folk custom in the East at perceptual level and national allegory at rational level, to display the inborn hostility and furious struggle among women in a big traditional family with wives and concubines in flocks and to express reflection on traditional culture and attention to human nature. In this paper, comparison and analysis will be made between literary language and film language of Wives and Concubines and Raise the Red Lantern from 7 aspects covering scene, symbolic image, plot setting, narrative, etc.
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