(aka YING XIONG)
***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Jet Li, Tony Cheung Chiu Wai, Maggie Cheung, Ziyi Zhang, Daoming Chen, and Donnie Yen
Directed by Zhang Yimou & written by Yimou, Bin Wang, and Feng Li
2002 (US release 2004)
98 min PG13
Dozen-or-So Best Films of 2004
Zhang Yimou’s epic and splendid “Hero” starts out as a fable written in gigantic, embroidered letters, about a warrior trying to play a trick on the emperor. At one point the emperor thinks he has the warrior’s trick figured out. We think the fable is about to end, as a fable must; the warrior has just described how he has defeated three master assassins, and three is always the magic number. Then we realize this is only “Hero’s” first act and the fable opens up like a brilliant puzzle box, in which the first act is like the undergraduate courses where the rules are explained. Now the real game begins.
I think I passed the undergrad stuff; I saw how the warrior was hiding everything in plain sight, as I suspect the entirety of the film does. As for what comes after that…you’re on your own. If writing this review has proved anything to me, it’s that I need to see “Hero” again. It’s been forty-eight hours since I left that theater and I barely feel like I understood anything at all. Think “Rashomon” crossed with “1001 Arabian Nights.”
The frame for the fable is a meeting between the emperor and the warrior who has vanquished the three assassins who have been plaguing the emperor ever since he set out to unite the six kingdoms. Day and night, the emperor has been forced to hide in his vast and foreboding palace, surrounding by hundreds or even thousands of guards. With each story of an assassin’s defeat, the warrior is allowed to sit ten paces closer to the emperor. (Hmmm….) There is more to the mystery of the warrior’s tale than a scavenger hunt like “The Usual Suspects” in which the allure is simply a sleight-of-hand or a parlor trick. There is a lesson here, for both us and the emperor, and the circuitous path taken by the warrior might be the only way. Again, hmmm…
How is “Hero” like a fable? For starters, the cast is comprised of characters named Sky, Falling Snow, Moon, Broken Sword, and Nameless. Listen to how the warrior Nameless (Jet Li, in an expressionless, physical performance beloved by guys like me) describes how he defeated the assassins Sky and Broken Sword. He crosses swords with Sky (Donnie Yen), a master chess player, for only a few moments. Then the two men stand on opposite ends of a courtyard with their eyes closed, imagining how their battle will go, in exactly the same way that two chess players imagine how a game will be played a dozen moves in advance. Broken Sword (Tony Cheung Chiu Wai) is a master calligrapher; calligraphy and sword play, Nameless explains to the emperor (Daoming Chen), are both about the union of the heart and of the wrist. So Nameless commissions Broken Sword to draw him a symbol and proceeds to study the symbol all night so that he may learn the secret of Broken Sword’s skill.
There’s also an elemental quality to everything in “Hero.” Nameless fights Broken Sword on the surface of a lake and Sky while standing in the rain. Snow (Maggie Cheung) and Moon (Ziyi Zhang of “Crouching Tiger” and “The Road Home”) fight with the wind and the leaves. As they do battle in a leaf-filled clearing, Snow never allows their swords to cross. Instead, she moves so quickly that Moon is alternately blinded by waves of flying leaves or blinded by the sun. (Moon’s swords are, incidentally, both crescents.)
Needless to say, I can prove that there exists a maze of symbolism a lot more easily than I can prove what it means. As the warrior’s conversation with the emperor winds and twists in on itself we start seeing different versions of the same story, each cast in a different shade. The reality of envy is red. The emperor’s palace is gloomy and black. The autumnal battle between Snow and Moon is orange. The watery dojo where Sky plays chess is grey and damp. Green is the color of the romance between Snow and Broken Sword, as well as their attack on the emperor and Snow’s funeral. Blue is the color of sacrifice. The same library appears in the red, white, and blue realities; I wonder if it was a different set each time. A menage-a-trois is rumored to exist among the three assassins, and virtually every combination (hetero, at least) of betrayal, sacrifice, and eternal union is explored in differing flashbacks. The final, unison chants of the emperor’s advisors—“Execute him! Execute him!”—sound like nothing so much as Christian Passion plays in which churchgoers belt out “Crucify him!” in one voice. Indeed the film seems to end with a blameless character trading his life so that a selfish man will reconcile his ways. White is the color of this reality, where we find Snow and Broken Sword in white robes, as if washed of their inequities.
Page two of "Hero" (2002). Back to home.