Stephen_Murray's Full Review: House of Flying Daggers
The PRC's greatest film director, Zhang Yimou's "Shi mian mai fu" (the title is a frozen Chinese metaphor ten-sided ambush, that is, ambushed from all sides, that I would have translated as "No Escape"; the exoticizing "House of Flying Daggers" too readily recalls "The Master of the Flying Guillotines" to those familiar with Chinese martial arts movies) is an incredibly gorgeously photographed movie of intrigue, flight, and battle with a developing romance between two very attractive stars, Zhang Ziyi (the young woman warrior in "Hero" and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and the Japanese(fathered)-Taiwanese(mothered and birthplaced) Kaneshiro Takeshi (who played the canned pineapple-eating cop #233 in Wong Karwai's Chungking Express).
The movie has received the Los Angeles Film Critics Award for best foreign-language film and been generally reviewed very favorably in print media, though there are only three epinion reviews and an average rating of three stars. I have finally gotten around to writing about it to raise that composite rating, and to discuss the politics of the movie, which many reviewers (including my favorite current writer on movies, Anthony Lane in the New Yorker) have asserted has no politics, following upon the politically loaded first foray by Zhang Yimou into the epic wuxia warrior genre, "Hero" (the shortened version of the not-particularly long and also ravishingly photographed "Ying xiong," a 2002 nominee for the best foreign-language Oscar and far superior to the winner...).
Beyond my general boredom with supplying plot summaries, I don't want to write very much about the plot, because it involved double-crosses, triple crosses, and by some accounting, quadruple crosses. However, given the surprising dearth of epinions for this Major Motion Picture, I have to specify that it is set in China in 859 A.D., as the T'ang Dynasty is in decline. The corrupt local officials are beset by a sort of Robin Hood-like gang in a bamboo Sherwood Forest. The preferred weapon of these outlaw rebels robbing the rich and giving to the poor is thrown daggers. These daggers don't start flying until fairly far into the movie, but fly around obstacles and are more accurate than "smart bombs."
The leader of the "House of Flying Daggers" has been killed. The T'ang officials suspect that a blind dancer at a very fancy local wineshop/bordello is the daughter of the dead leader, and hope that she will lead the T'ang forces to the evasive forest band. The movie opens at a sort of T'ang precinct headquarters, where constables Leo ((Hong Kong pop star Andy Lau, star of "Infernal Affairs") and Jin (Kaneshiro) are commanded to find the House of Flying Daggers.
Jin goes and gets drunk or feigns drunkenness, paws the blind dancing girl, Mei (Zhang Ziyi). Leo orders both to be arrested. After the owner of the Peony Pavilion blames the drunkard and lauds Mei's abilities, Leo asks is she knows how to play the echo game. She says she has played it one. They then launch into one of the strangest and visually stunning duels every committed to film. Jin and Mei take their places in a circle of drums (the drumheads being vertical). Leo flicks a nut at a drum, and (relying on the sound), Mei echoes with very long weighted sleeves. The counterpoint accelerates. The scene has CGI enhancements (especially in the last phase when her sleeve captures his sword) and some wire work, but requires the physical grace of Zhang Ziyi (who was a dance student before becoming a martial arts superstar) and some wordless acting by Lau, as well.
After the drums photogenically crash and after more fighting beside a pool, Mei and Jin move out of the Peony Pavilion wine house, Mei is arrested. The police plan is for Jin to rescue her (masked in the Zorro tradition) and for Leo to trail them to the rebel stronghold, wherever that might be. The plot thickens in ways I don't want to reveal, but the conventions of movies are such that anyone who has seen very many movies knows that the desperate flight together will bond Mei and Jin. Jin also says he is fed up with official corruption, an attitude he may be feigning or might have evenbeing in the empire's employ.
The dialogue between Mei and Jin generally is less important than how they look at each other. The closeups are not as tight as those of Sergio Leone, but there are many closeups of significant looks. And they only survive ambushes by troops who do not know of the plan to follow rather than capture Mei due to the smooth coordination of their considerable fighting skills
Without revealing which characters are involved in what ways, I want to single out the rich visuals of the closing in of a bamboo cage at the end of a highly photogenic chase through a bamboo forest (on the ground, rather than on top as in the duel between Zhang Ziyi and Jou Yunfat in "Crouching Tiger"), and the final fight to the death in the snow. The former relies on CGI, the latter only has some enhancement of a real snowfall (though some have supposed that the snow is a computer graphic addition*).
"House of Flying Daggers" does not have a color-coded scheme as "Hero" did, but the color cinematography of Zhou Xiaoding (who has no previous screen credits?!?) is awe-inspiring, in the same league as that of Christopher Doyle in "Hero" and of Peter Pau in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." The visual aspects of any of these three movies makes them worth viewing even for someone bored with fight scenes or bored with romances or annoyed by double-dealing, shifting plots. (And the editing of Cheng Long is integral to the full impact of the cinematographic brilliance.)
I could not give "Flying Daggers" top ranking for plot, and there is one piece that is harder for me to shrug off than the four arrows that Jin fires in rapid succession all arriving at their targets at the same time (the latter is entertaining, the plot chasm may be necessary to reach the final confrontations but is hard for me to leap over nonetheless).
I can also understand that some viewers think that there is too much running through the forest, though such forests they are! And a birch forest as well as the bamboo one. And the hero and heroine are so dashing, why not have them dash (and dash)?
I find the leads, the visuals, the music (by Shigeru Umebayashi, less obtrusive than that Tan Dun supplied "Crouching Tiger" and "Hero") superlative and recommend the movie to anyone who loves movies, not just those who love martial arts movies. I'd also note that like "Crouching Tiger," "House of Flying Daggers" (and the collected work of Zhang Yimou!) provide major parts for women and that these women are the equals of men in the most masculinist of all realms, fighting. (The movies with Brigitte Lin, such as "The East is Red," pioneered this and it has also been carried over by pulp enthusiast Quentin Tarrantino in "Kill Bill.")
The Politics
I think that "Hero" is a visually amazing film, too, and that Zhang Yimou was established as a master director during the period of his alliance (onscreen and off) with Li Gong. Many of those movies (notably "Red Sorghum," "Raise the Red Lantern" and "To Live") were banned for antisocial content and/or for not showing the PRC dynasty as a workers' paradise on earth.
Some of those interested in the politics of culture production in the PRC thought that Zhang had sold out to authoritarianism in "Hero." a movie in which an enemy of the state (the first emperor's unification of seven kingdom) changes his mind once he reaches the presence of the Celestial Emperor. Let me digress to note the hardiness of the Chinese view of regimes having or not having the "mandate of Heaven," and to digress within the digression to note that traditional Chinese religious belief has been anything but monotheistic. The "Heaven" that grants or withdraws favor from a ruler is not a single deity and the perspective is quite different from the "divine right" of some line to reign. The first emperor had tremendous personal charisma--and more than a little savvy! I think that it is this charisma that stays the hand of the ultimate assassin (Jet Li's unnamed character) along with amazement at the Qin emperor's courage when assassin and emperor come face to face. The assassin already has some hesitation about his mission because of a split between his two prime confederates, one of whom (Tony Leung) argues against carrying out the assassination they have long planned. It seems to me that within the Chinese cosmology, Jet Li went in unsure of the legitimacy of striking down the emperor and during their conference concludes that this man really should rule.
The specific rhetoric of "mandate of Heaven" has been extirpated in the atheistic PRC, though the masses (in whose name the communist party rules...) continue to look at portents such as floods for evidence of the regime's legitimacy. The PRC oligarchs claim legitimacy based on historical inevitably (shaky as the notion is as the communist dictatorship becomes increasingly post-Marxist...) but welcome ultra-nationalist representations lauding unification, not least because there are strong movements and sentiments in Muslim and Tibetan parts of the PRC to split from rule by the Han Chinese (capitalist or communist). Thus, "Hero" has been read as an admonishment to Tibet and Singjiang to revere central authority. This reading pleaded the culture commissars in Beijing, and Zhang Yimou was rewarded by being entrusted with directing the Beijing 2008 Olympics preview at the closing ceremony of the 2004 Athens Olympics. And, presumably, by easier access to the means of production for his next movie.
Many Taiwanese bridled at the unification-glorifying message of "Hero." My own interpretation of the relevance to Taiwan of "Hero" centers on what happens after Jet Li does not assassinate the emperor. It is that "if you surrender to Chinese unification, they'll kill you anyway" (with Jet Li as a stand-in for Taiwan).
"The House of Flying Dagger" is not as obviously freighted with political message as "Hero." Anthony Lane, for instance, wrote that "the tension that thrums through this movie, however, is entirely bound up with physical threat, whereas its political equivalent is nil." However, as I wrote, the "mandate of Heaven" comes and goes. The history of China involves the rise and fall of dynasties, the expansion and contraction of territory, and more than a few eras without a single centralized authority.
"Hero" was set in the exalted moment of a rise to power (though the empire of the first emperor did not include much of the territory now ruled by the PRC). In contrast, "Flying Daggers" is set in an era of rampant corruption and declining legitimacy. That is, it can be read as a reminder that the "mandate of Heaven" moves on, that the center does not hold. Actually, such a reading should be even more readily available in English, because the English title de facto legitimizes the enemies of the tottering state, the rebel "House of Flying Daggers."
Plot spoiler alert
By the end of the movie, none of the characters is still committed to defending the government. One who had seemed to be was a double agent. The other has abandoned his commitment and has substituted love for duty (as does the third). This
end plot spoiler alert
individualism is contrary to the PRC politically correct message of subordinating individual interests to the greater glory of the nation (as nationalism increasingly replaces Maoism as legitimation for the regime). The movie does not side with the rebels, but promoting individuals throwing off their duty to the state is subversive and very much in the tradition of the earlier Zhang Yimou movies showcasing the suffering under all 20th-century regimes of ordinary Chinese, and even the more recent Not One Less that has potential to be read as critical of present-dat PRC policies but also a plausible deniability. Thus, I am not at all convinced that the crafty and resourceful Zhang Yimou has either retreated from social criticism or is now kowtowing to the masters in Beijing.
However,
Another plot spoiler alert!
following the logic of calling attention to the very end of "Hero," I have to acknowledge that choosing love (individual happiness) in "Daggers" leads quickly to death (for one of the two resisting falling in love through their dependency on each other to survive ambushes from all directions.
Perhaps I am so accustomed to romantic deaths (Romeo and Juliet, the Liebestod, etc. various Japanese love suicides and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), that I didn't immediately notice this possible reading. In that once Mei decides to abandon her filial piety duty and go to in she is cut down by jealousy--more "Othello" than "Romeo and Juliet." Nonetheless, despite the tragic fate of (one of) those who attempt to drop out of the political struggle here, the movie undeniably draws attention to a successful centralized state losing the monopoly on the use of force and in the process of dissolution, something the Beijing oligarchs do not want thought about. (And it appears to me that Jin is heartbroken but alive at the end, though Mei has already been fatefully wounded when he turns back for her.)
end second plot spoiler alert
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The Chinese DVD I have includes credible subtitles (in English, plus the simplified characters used in the PRC or traditional (now "complicated" characters) a theatrical trailer (not subtitled), a photo gallery, and bilingual cast and crew filmographies. A movie so vibrantly widescreen that it seems to reach into neighboring theaters in multiplexes (a characterization from the San Francisco Weekly capsule review is best experienced in theaters.
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*Zhang Yimou related: "We traveled to the Ukraine in September 2003 to shoot the film House of Flying Daggers. I was attracted to this location because of its beautiful scenery. However, the weather there was not very stable; there were not many sunny days. It rained all the time during autumn, and the snow came early this time (in October 2003). I remember one day when I got up in the morning, everything outside the window was covered with snow. The locals told me that the snow would be gone in one day. So, I waited for one day, but the weather was not improving and it seemed that the snow would not stop that soon. It would take ten days for the snow to melt and the leaves would have mashed. So, I decided to shoot the ending fight scene in the snow."
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