***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Zhang Ziyi, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau, and Dandan Song
Directed by Zhang Yimou & written by Zhang Yimou, Feng Li, and Bin Wang
2004
119 min PG13
Dozen-or-So Best Films of 2004
It’s fitting (and helpful for us dim round-eyes) that Zhang Yimou’s 2002 film “Hero” and his newest release, “House of Flying Daggers,” are being released in America within only a few months of each other. The differences between these and his older films, such as “Raise the Red Lantern,” “The Road Home,” and “Shanghai Triad” are striking, and not just because the people in those films can only fly if they get into an airplane. The bulk of Zhang’s work is languidly paced, naturalist, and about specific characters in specific places. We believe the universe where they are set stretches and rambles in all directions, as does our reality.
But with his martial arts spectacles, specific characters have given way to representational abstractions. Naturalism in manner and direction has given way to fables and mechanical artifice, in which short takes, short run times, and clipped dialogue keep the fairy tale moving forward. An infinite universe has given way to a closed system of a half-dozen characters, a cosmos without loose ends that may well terminate on just the other side of those beautifully photographed mountains. If we don’t see someone or hear his name mentioned, he probably doesn’t exist, and even some of the people we do see may possess only as much dimension as an automaton in an Escher drawing. In my review of “Hero,” I refer to that film as a puzzle box for its lean and economically unfolding narrative perfection, and the same can, I think, be said of “House of Flying Daggers.” If I discovered that both films were based on thousand-year-old legends whose authors have long since lost their names to time, I would not be surprised.
“House” pounces on its plot within seconds. In medieval China, the corrupt and incompetent Tang dynasty is beset by an underground rebel movement known as the House of Flying Daggers (your instincts might tell you that an invisible Chinese rebellion against imperialism must represent Communism, but you’re thinking of the House of Flying Sickles). Two open-faced and grinning local captains named Jin and Leo (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Andy Lau) have ten days to find and capture the new leader of the Flying Daggers. Unconcerned and nonchalant as they are, they are the men responsible for putting the last leader of the Flying Daggers into the ground. They learn that Mei, the blind daughter (Zhang Ziyi of “Hero” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) of the old leader, is undercover at a nearby brothel. Together, they trick her into believing that Jin has rescued her from Leo so that she will lead them to the Flying Daggers’s new leader. So begins a deadly trek through the wilderness, in which they are beset by the soldiers belonging to an impatient imperial general, as well as flying knives that seem to come out of the trees themselves. Not surprisingly, since Jin looks like a Chinese Jude Law and Mei looks like Zhang Ziyi, things get a little amorous.
The look and pure cinema of “House of Flying Daggers” are what’s grabbing all the attention. A kung-fu movie is a lot like a wine tasting: no matter how much work, art, and meaning goes into it, it can never be completely serious. I think it no accident on the part of director Zhang Yimou that everyone at my screening laughed as imperial soldiers paused in the bamboo melee to cut down trunks and shave off leaves and branches to make new spears.
But seriously, there is such ethereal grace to “wire-fu” when it’s done well and a director gives it room to breathe. The masculine thrill and competitiveness of violence and sports are combined with the feminine appreciation of dance. A friend of mine who has become a recent enthusiast of Chinese cinema (a Sinocinemaphiliac?) says that wire-fu’s direct ancestor is shadow puppetry, in which not only violence and anger are portrayed by superhuman movement, but all the other emotions as well. A puppet (and, therefore, a person) flying through the air out of sheer joy is not so different than someone bursting into song for the same reason in a Technicolor musical. There’s certainly an English lit paper in why superhuman feats for purposes other than killing have fallen by the wayside. If only Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire had made a few fight movies, they would be as popular today as they ever were.
“Hero” has a couple of well-placed ruses, one that we can see through pretty early on—which I think was the point—and then the real story starts. “Flying Daggers” pulls the same trick. We can tell fairly soon that the journey through the forest is not all that it seems, but seeing through that ruse only lulls us into a false sense of security so that we can better appreciate later complications. Zhang seems to be working with symmetry and mirrors: each time something happens to one character, it happens to another, either immediately or eventually. If we are denied what’s going through the head of one character, maybe all we have to do is think of what’s been expressed by another. The result is that the forces of the empire and those of the rebellion become indistinguishable. (Peter Weir’s “Master and Commander” is similarly themed: every time the men on the British boat look through their periscopes all they see are the men on the French boat looking right back at them.) The result of their conflict doesn’t matter and, amazingly, is even left out of the film. I’m fond of quoting the Trappist Thomas Merton’s remark that all revolutions are the same and accomplish nothing: power over the many is taken from one small group by another small group.
Page two of "House of Flying Daggers." Back to home.