Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Yes, I know I could just order it on DVD, but I want to have this experience in the theater first. It’s frustrating... the rest of the world has seen this, it was one of last year’s Oscar nominees, and still Miramax sits on it, waiting for just the right moment to marginalize and underrelease it.
Grrrrrrr...
Hey Moriarty,
I got a chance to see Zhang Yimou's HERO, here's a review...
“I was orphaned at an early age.
I had no name, so people called me Nameless.
Being a nobody I studied swordsmanship.
After 10 years of practice I acquired a unique skill.
The King of Qin has summoned me.
My deeds have astonished the Kingdom..."
Circa 220 B.C., before the reign of the first emperor, China is split between six kingdoms. Qin is spreading through the other regions, propelled by the might of its army and the leadership of the King (Chen Daoming). This displeases the people of the other provinces, hence the King of Qin must face constant assassination attempts. After allegedly defeating the three deadliest enemies of the Kingdom, Nameless (Jet Li) is called to the royal palace to tell his story.
In a nod to “Rashomon”, events unfold in contradictory flashbacks framed by Nameless’ testimony to the King. While a lot of the running time is devoted to epic confrontations with the three assassins, but director Zhang Yimou and cinematographer Christopher Doyle (the virtuoso who shot all of Wong Kar-Wai’s films) is after much more than cheap thrills. As in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (with which “Hero” shares Oscar-winning composer Tan Dun) but to an even greater extent, the fight scenes are so graceful that they transcend violence and achieve a state of physical poetry.
For instance, one of the most exquisite sequences has two women in bright red robes fencing as countless yellow leaves swirl around them until all we see is a dazzlingly colorful impressionist tableau. In an earlier duel pitting Nameless against Sky (Donnie Yen), their minds clash as much as their swords, quite literally. They even bring an old man to play at their side under the notion that martial arts and music “both stress attaining a supreme state”. There are also some epic, viscerally impressive attacks from the Qin army and its thousands of archers, but the most affecting scenes belong to the Zhao-born assassins Flying Snow and Broken Sword played by Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung , whose understated yet passionate love story is not unlike the one between Leung and Cheung in “In the Mood for Love”.
Their relationship is one of love and hate, dedication and betrayal, trust and jealousy... This could easily fall into cloying melodrama but Yimou treats the romance like the fights, keeping dialogue and waterworks to a minimum while conveying the intensity of the emotions visually. In most scenes, all of their clothes and surroundings are the same color: deep reds, blues, greens, whites... The only character who wears her heart on her sleeve is Moon (Zhang Ziyi), Broken Sword’s dedicated young servant; the scene where her Master carelessly uses her to get back at Flying Snow is particularly heartbreaking.
Whereas the plot seems inconsequential early on, things become more ambiguous as we gradually realise that the King is a tyrant who draws his power from aggression and repression. It doesn’t take long for us to switch our allegiances to the so-called bad guys, whose regicidal intentions come in reaction to the King’s wish to eradicate their culture. Nameless, whom we assumed to be the titular Hero, reveals himself as not only an unreliable narrator but one with questionable motives, and that’s just the beginning.
“Hero” displays a rare level of artistry, thematic depth and emotional resonance. Keep an eye out for it!
Yeah, okay, damn it. Rub it in. Where else is this film already playing?
Hey Harry, today was the first day that HERO was released in Greek theaters, so I thought that I’d send you a review of the film since I haven’t seen that many around. The new film by Director Zang Yimou is a martial arts movie in the tradition of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It’s really a different kind of movie though as I’ll explain later on.
The plot of the film centers on Anonymous, played by Jet Li, famous to all your readers without a doubt for his roles in a number of lackluster action movies. Anonymous is an assassin that visits the king of Kin, a victim of many failed assassination attempts against his life, to inform him that he has killed in battle the three most dangerous assassins – enemies of his kingdom. The king you see tries to unite the seven kingdoms of China with bloody results and without everyone’s consent. No wonder the guy has many enemies. The plot thickens however during the course of the movie as we discover that not everything is as it seems…
The most distinct feature of Hero is its visual grandeur. Nearly every frame could be a cinematic painting, a picture of beauty and art. Really, some of its imaging is absolutely mesmerizing and those scenes are the ones that follow you all the way home and that make Hero a keeper. The battle scenes are less energetic than the ones of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon as they are often executed in slow motion, but that only adds to the effect that Yimou is trying to create. A mystical world, full of beauty and danger, where the fallen leaves can become deadly traps and drops of water falling on swords become a ritual of life and death. Yes, the imagery is really that striking. The warriors themselves are wonderful, magical creatures, capable of taking down armies of warriors and dodging thousands of arrows only by theirs gracious movements. And when they die, they die with the grace that they fight. The assassins that Anonymous has to face include Maggie Cheung, (whose face is a work of art by itself), Tony Leung (who worked with Maggie Cheung in a lovely film called In The Mood For Love), Zang Ziyi , and Donny Yen . Through out the movie they become doomed lovers, jealous mistresses, traitors, friends, they give their life freely and claim the lives of others without remorse.
In contrast to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, whose story and characters were the main focus with brilliant displays of martial arts in between, Hero’s running time is largely consisted of battle scenes. And since the movie really is retelling the same story 3 times and the same characters are fighting the same battles, Yimou once again lets the visuals distinguish one battle from the other, and the effects really are stunning. They never lose their freshness and in more than one occasions you’re left awe struck. There are 4 colour modes for each battle: red, blue, white & green, the one better than the oher. Hero could be one of the most visually impressive movies I've seen and its production and artistic values are sky high .
Hero has a weak story, and that’s its biggest flaw. Is surrenders all narrative development to its gloriousness of visuals. I, for one, love what it has accomplished, but many could find it boring and repetitive. It really lacks the emotional weight that Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon brought to the table and therefore could be considered by many as an exercise in style and aesthetics but not an accomplished movie in the narrative angle of filmmaking. Even so, the actors are all accomplished and manage to create scenes where you can feel their pain and indecision, torn between their convictions and their desires. Lastly, the movie’s ideology is highly debatable and could leave a sore taste in the mouth of many viewers, even though it wasn’t enough to lessen my impressions of the movie.
All in all, Hero is a movie definitely worth checking out, just for the fact that it offers some of the most lush, beautifully realized and executed scenes we are bound to experience all year and that alone towers above a mediocre script and an outdated ideology.
Peace
You can call me Alexander for that really is my name.
Thanks, Alexander. Thanks, our first scooper. No thanks at all, Miramax.
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