"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Tuesday, September 13, 2016

Hero (2002, PG-13)

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.

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