Beautiful and poetic, the first two-thirds of this film are sensational.
Murder, revenge, love, betrayal - these are all tired by-words that bounce off a potential movie-goers brain when we see them in advertisements. If that's your response too, this time I urge you to ignore it, because, final score notwithstanding, there is so much to be savoured and enjoyed in just looking at the screen.
Zhang Yimou, once a photographer and cinematographer himself, has an exquisite eye. Colour is a recurring feature of his films, with a life and story of it's own to tell, and this film is textured almost to the point of gluttony. To call it breathtaking is not overstating it. But unlike the deliberate stylisation of Hero, the settings here are much earthier. You can feel each flower and blade of grass, and marvel at the vivid detail in the costumes. It's wildly sensuous on a visual level. The drama, as we have seen from Zhang before, is heightened by the moodiness of the weather, and emotions are expressed through the changing of seasons.
The combat sequences are inventively executed, giving the violence an uneasy beauty. As is often the case in this genre, the fights might astound you with the precision and power of the choreography, but they keep you at a distance from the pain and injury. Not so in the final showdown between the characters Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and Leo (Andy Lau Tak Wah). This is a man's fight, brutal, bloody, messy and decidedly ungraceful. When Leo raises his sword to kill Jin, he means it. His anger is so ferocious that it can only be represented by a drastic change in season. Mid fight, Autumn becomes Winter, showing that the friendship these men once had has gone irreparably from cool tolerance to icy, implacable fury. It is a feature of the novels from which many of these stories are taken, that the martial arts skill of the protagonists is so great they are actually able to harness the power of the elements to use to their own advantage. This may or may not be the case here; no-one benefits from the snow and sleet, for all, as Shakespeare once put it, are punished.
However, when the melodrama hits, the rhapsody is seriously tainted. In any movie, some suspension of disbelief is a given, but when it's suspended over a gaping chest wound and under three feet of snow, and it's already hanging by the thinnest of threads, it becomes comical instead of dramatic. My friend and me both wailed with disbelief every time Mei (Zhang Ziyi) was resurrected towards the end (Don't tell me she's getting up AGAIN!??). Had she died the first time she was stabbed, and actually stayed dead, the effectiveness of the movie would have been increased by 90%. Unfortunately, some of the high marks earned were lost by the stupidity of this plot-point.
Further, the dialogue at key moments was just cheesy and embarrassing. I thought perhaps it was a translation problem, but my friend, who is from Mainland China, assured me it was in equally poor taste in Mandarin. Such a pity, because it could've been salvaged by some ruthless script doctoring.
First two thirds: 7/10 Last third: 3/10 Score out of 10 = 5.5, but I'll round it up to 6.
(As an aside, Andy Lau's Mandarin was an achievement in itself. I understand it was dubbed later to achieve the maximum correct pronunciation, but at least it was dubbed by him and not another actor. After watching around half of his hundred or so movies, all in Cantonese, it was a great pleasure to see him take on the task and do so well. My friend would not believe it was him, it was so good.)
Murder, revenge, love, betrayal - these are all tired by-words that bounce off a potential movie-goers brain when we see them in advertisements. If that's your response too, this time I urge you to ignore it, because, final score notwithstanding, there is so much to be savoured and enjoyed in just looking at the screen.
Zhang Yimou, once a photographer and cinematographer himself, has an exquisite eye. Colour is a recurring feature of his films, with a life and story of it's own to tell, and this film is textured almost to the point of gluttony. To call it breathtaking is not overstating it. But unlike the deliberate stylisation of Hero, the settings here are much earthier. You can feel each flower and blade of grass, and marvel at the vivid detail in the costumes. It's wildly sensuous on a visual level. The drama, as we have seen from Zhang before, is heightened by the moodiness of the weather, and emotions are expressed through the changing of seasons.
The combat sequences are inventively executed, giving the violence an uneasy beauty. As is often the case in this genre, the fights might astound you with the precision and power of the choreography, but they keep you at a distance from the pain and injury. Not so in the final showdown between the characters Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and Leo (Andy Lau Tak Wah). This is a man's fight, brutal, bloody, messy and decidedly ungraceful. When Leo raises his sword to kill Jin, he means it. His anger is so ferocious that it can only be represented by a drastic change in season. Mid fight, Autumn becomes Winter, showing that the friendship these men once had has gone irreparably from cool tolerance to icy, implacable fury. It is a feature of the novels from which many of these stories are taken, that the martial arts skill of the protagonists is so great they are actually able to harness the power of the elements to use to their own advantage. This may or may not be the case here; no-one benefits from the snow and sleet, for all, as Shakespeare once put it, are punished.
However, when the melodrama hits, the rhapsody is seriously tainted. In any movie, some suspension of disbelief is a given, but when it's suspended over a gaping chest wound and under three feet of snow, and it's already hanging by the thinnest of threads, it becomes comical instead of dramatic. My friend and me both wailed with disbelief every time Mei (Zhang Ziyi) was resurrected towards the end (Don't tell me she's getting up AGAIN!??). Had she died the first time she was stabbed, and actually stayed dead, the effectiveness of the movie would have been increased by 90%. Unfortunately, some of the high marks earned were lost by the stupidity of this plot-point.
Further, the dialogue at key moments was just cheesy and embarrassing. I thought perhaps it was a translation problem, but my friend, who is from Mainland China, assured me it was in equally poor taste in Mandarin. Such a pity, because it could've been salvaged by some ruthless script doctoring.
First two thirds: 7/10 Last third: 3/10 Score out of 10 = 5.5, but I'll round it up to 6.
(As an aside, Andy Lau's Mandarin was an achievement in itself. I understand it was dubbed later to achieve the maximum correct pronunciation, but at least it was dubbed by him and not another actor. After watching around half of his hundred or so movies, all in Cantonese, it was a great pleasure to see him take on the task and do so well. My friend would not believe it was him, it was so good.)