General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Peacock (孔雀) (2005 film)

Peacock (孔雀) is a 2005 Chinese family drama and the directorial debut of cinematographer Gu Changwei (顾长卫), written by Li Qiang (李樯) and released in mainland China on 18 February 2005¹. Set in the ancient Henan city of Anyang in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it follows the three grown children of an ordinary five-member family as each pursues and loses a dream during China's transition years¹. The film won the Silver Bear Jury Grand Prix, the runner-up prize, at the 55th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2005².

Key fact	Detail
Chinese title / English title	孔雀 / Peacock¹
Director / screenwriter	Gu Changwei (directorial debut); Li Qiang¹
Release	18 February 2005 (mainland China and Germany); 141 minutes¹^•⁸
Setting	Anyang, Henan, a five-member working family, roughly 1976 to 1984¹
Principal cast	Zhang Jingchu (sister Gao Weihong), Feng Li (brother Gao Weiguo), Lu Yulai (younger brother Gao Weiqiang), Huang Meiying (mother)¹
Berlin result	Silver Bear Jury Grand Prix (runner-up to the Golden Bear); Golden Bear nomination for Gu Changwei²^•⁸
Budget	15 million RMB investment reported at production; Gu Changwei put total production spending at 16 million RMB¹^•³

Spoilers

Plot and characters

The film is told from the perspective of the younger brother, whose heavily accented voice-over narration introduces three parallel life stories, one for each sibling⁴. The sister, Gao Weihong, is in her early twenties, thin and quiet in appearance but stubborn and intense; she dreams of becoming a paratrooper, and after repeated setbacks learns to accept her fate⁵. The older brother, Gao Weiguo, suffered brain damage from childhood illness; his parents favor him, and after an arranged marriage to a shrewd woman with a limp he settles into a life that satisfies him⁵. The younger brother, Gao Weiqiang, is sensitive and melancholic; after his father drives him from the house he searches for a life outside it, and time remakes him beyond recognition⁵.

Several scenes became the film's signature images. The sister, denied entry to the paratroopers, sews her own parachute from sheets and rides a bicycle through the streets with it fanning open behind her⁶. The brother courts a woman he admires by presenting her with a large sunflower⁷. In the episode the screenwriter Li Qiang's script is most associated with, the younger brother, resentful that his parents neglect him for the brain-damaged older brother, buys rat poison and slips it into the brother's water glass; the sister pours the water out, and the next morning the mother force-feeds the same poison to the family's white goose, which dies in front of the silent family⁹. The film closes in a park, where the family members take turns trying to make a peacock spread its tail; the bird finally opens it only after the visitors have turned away¹⁰.

Gu Changwei explained the title as a statement about spectatorship: people and lives are intensely watchable, everyone watches everyone else and themselves, and the peacock is simply the most watchable of animals, while the three children carry their stories like colorful plumage¹¹.

Production

Li Qiang wrote the screenplay around 2000 from his own life experience; it is autobiographical in basis, and people in the film industry had wanted to shoot it for years, with one attempt abandoned partway for lack of funds¹. In late 2002 Gu Changwei, then preparing other films as a cinematographer, and producer Dong Ping came across the script and decided to invest in it¹.

Gu had been one of China's leading cinematographers, shooting Zhang Yimou's Red Sorghum and Ju Dou, Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for his camera work, and Jiang Wen's Devils at the Doorstep¹²^•¹³. For his own film he hired the cinematographer Yang Shu rather than shooting it himself, and cast largely unknown actors after auditioning more than a thousand people¹⁴^•¹. Shooting took four months in Anyang, partly during the SARS period, with Gu often filming only one or two scenes a day¹⁴.

Cutting the film down. The first script draft ran to 240 scenes, against the 110 to 120 of a conventional film; it was reduced to 222, then 156 for shooting, and the released film uses about 130¹⁴. The first cut ran close to three hours; for commercial release it was trimmed to about two hours and twenty minutes, and the brother's story, which had included school violence and homosexual elements, was cut hardest³^•⁹. Gu, Wang Shuo, and Tian Zhuangzhuang each cut versions of the film during editing¹⁴. Gu said the brother was in fact a richer character than the sister, and that he planned to issue a director's cut on DVD³.

Release and reception

The film premiered in Beijing on 25 December 2004 in a preview run of one screening per week with 100 tickets each, a word-of-mouth strategy before the general release in February 2005¹⁵. Its 2-hour-20-minute length was reported as a record for a Chinese feature in the new century¹⁵. At Berlin it was the only Chinese film in competition and took the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear, while the Golden Bear went to U-Carmen eKhayelitsha². Audiences at the 7th Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy, voted it the top prize in April 2005¹⁶.

In China the film drew large audiences and debate. A Shanghai midnight screening after the Berlin win ended with no viewer leaving before the credits finished¹⁷. Box office in Chengdu passed 700,000 RMB within days of release, the highest of any city at that point¹⁸, and a Sina report in late March put total box office at 10 million RMB, breaking the pattern of high-art films earning little¹⁹. At the 14th Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, Huang Meiying won Best Supporting Actress, and the film later took Best Screenplay, Best Actress, and Best New Actor awards at the 6th Chinese Film Media Awards⁸.

International critics read the film as restrained rather than spectacular. Time called it a portrait of a family's struggles that draws its power from a complex script, imperfect characters, and emotional restraint¹². Screen International wrote that it exalts the ordinary and shows there is more beneath everyday problems than meets the eye²⁰. The Washington Post described it as working both as family drama and political allegory, ending on a cautious kind of hope²¹. Domestic criticism was divided: some reviewers found the three-part structure and staged emotional scenes affected, arguing the film lacked a complete story or fully plausible characters²², while others praised its plain, unadorned realism⁷. Gu himself acknowledged the film was not perfect, saying the three stories weaken in turn and that the brother's shortened section leaves gaps¹⁸.

Style and themes

The film's structure is a parallel montage of three sibling stories, each with its own thread but all bound to the family's growth and changing circumstances, an arrangement critics described as scattered in form but unified in spirit⁴. Gu deliberately downplayed the historical background and the plot line, focusing instead on fragments of ordinary life; the era is felt through details such as pressing coal briquettes and making tomato paste rather than through explicit events²³^•⁹. Gu said he wanted to observe individual lives with the perspective of a neighbor, classmate, or acquaintance, rather than the historical or group focus of earlier Chinese cinema¹⁴.

He also said he wanted the camera restrained: the sister's parachute ride is not a realistic scene but a deliberately expressive one, and the film's ideal effect was tears held in the eyes rather than shed⁹^•¹⁷. He assigned each sibling a disposition: the sister stands for idealism, the brother for realism, and the younger brother for pessimism¹⁸.

The film's versions differ by market. The mainland release runs 141 minutes; the Japanese theatrical release in February 2007 ran 136 minutes under the title 孔雀我が家の風景⁸^•²⁴, and festival catalogs in 2005 listed running times from 138 to 161 minutes for different prints²⁵^•²⁰. Gu's next film, And the Spring Comes (立春), again written by Li Qiang, was already announced in interviews at the time of Peacock's release¹⁴.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026