Although
I’ve talked about this movie before, I’ve never reviewed it, and it’s high time
I remedy that. I’ll own to not having
seen a ton of wuxia, but I generally enjoy the films I’ve seen in the genre,
and this one is easily my favorite (I know – even more than Ashes of Time!) Here’s to this really beautiful piece of
cinema (spoilers for the chief narrative device.)
In
ancient China, the emperor of Qin, one of a number of warring kingdoms, is
attempting to unite them into one land, but the ruthless bloodiness of his
efforts has resulted in widespread hate throughout the kingdoms and many
attempts on his life. When a man known
as Nameless kills the three most notorious assassins who’ve attacked the
emperor, he is invited to the palace to tell the emperor his tale of how he
accomplished such a feat. But the lines
between tale and truth are not absolute, and the emperor begins to doubt the
veracity of Nameless’s tale.
Other
than its crazily-beautiful stylized fighting, this film is probably best-known
for its narrative construction and the way its visuals help realize that
concept. Here, the same
stories/flashbacks are told multiple times by different narrators, with
important differences each time. Separating
out the truths, lies, and suppositions is a careful business, rolling out
slowly over the course of the movie.
Each telling is given its own color scheme, which is simply stunning to
look at. I love how even nature follows
director Zhang Yimou’s vision. The fight
amid a whirlwind of fallen leaves in the red sequence, the fight across the
surface of a mirror-still lake in the red sequence, the lushness and growth in
the green sequence – there’s such a gorgeous harmony running through the
entirety of each section. I remember how
blown away I was at the first shift when I initially saw the film years
ago. In an instant, the movie went from
lovely and enjoyable to pretty amazing.
Really interesting storytelling that plays out exquisitely on the
screen.
The
action is fantastic, and right up my alley.
For my own personal preferences, I like my wuxia cool and hyper-stylized
but not too far outside the realm of
reality, and even though the characters do plenty of things that are clearly
impossible – like Flying Snow deflecting arrows with her robes or the
aforementioned fight on the surface of a lake – they don’t look as out-there
as, say, the wire-fu in Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon (no offense to that movie; I just prefer the style
here.) All the actors bring it hard in the action scenes, but they
bring it with their performances as well.
As Nameless, Jet Li is the story’s guiding force, and he plays the role
with quietly-intelligent intensity.
Daoming Chen does a stellar job as the Qin emperor, Donnie Yen is
memorable in his relatively small role as the assassin Sky, and Ziyi Zhang also
delivers in a smaller role. But for me
(no surprise if you’ve read my earlier write-up on the movie,) this film is all
about Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung Chiu-wai as assassins/lovers Flying Snow and
Broken Sword. It was one of, possibly the first film I saw Leung in and definitely the first film I saw Cheung
in, and they’re just everything. I can’t
take my eyes off them in any scene they’re in – such smart, soulful
performances, sizzling with this chemistry that’s just phenomenally understated
and yet still nearly melts my screen. So.
Much. Love.
Warnings
Stylized
wuxia violence and brief sexual content.
No comments:
Post a Comment