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HOUSE
OF FLYING DAGGERS
7/10
Shi
mian mai fu : China (China-'HK') 2004 : ZHANG YiMou
: 119 mins
There's no
actual "house" in House of Flying Daggers, but flying
daggers abound. Not to mention flying arrows, spears, darts, bamboo...
In fact, any throwable implement soon finds itself projected through the
air at a rapid rate in this wildly enjoyable and spectacular martial-arts
romance from a director who enjoyed enormous success with his last picture,
Hero. Director Zhang may
have reaped great financial benefits from Hero's success, but the
film attracted no shortage of flak from observers who detected dodgy modern-day
parallels in his tale of period political intrigue: the oft-repeated "all
under heaven" mantra was widely interpreted as a not-so-subtle endorsement
of the current Chinese government's policies towards breakaway areas such
as Tibet.
Flying
Daggers sends out rather more mixed messages: the film dramatises
the struggle faced by individuals who feel torn between duty and liberty
- a struggle which Zhang himself has clearly yet to reconcile. The government
(of 859 AD) is repeatedly referred to as corrupt and unworthy of office,
and the main underground opposition movement - the 'House of Flying Daggers'
- is presented as principled and glamorous. But despite a relatively tiny
number of major roles, there are sympathetic and unsympathetic representatives
of each side - and loyalties are constantly shifting as cross gives way
to double-cross, and multiple games of deception are played out.
As with Hero,
it's crucial that audiences don't know too much about these convolutions
beforehand - suffice it to say that we begin with two policemen, Jin (Takeshi
Kaneshiro, the mute from Wong Kar-Wai's Fallen Angels, etc) and
his superior Leo (Andy Lau, from Infernal
Affairs, etc). They are given ten days to track down and eliminate
the mysterious new leader of the House of Flying Daggers, and receive
a tip-off that a certain show-girl at the Peony Pavilion brothel run by
Madam Yee (Song DanDan) is a Flying Daggers operative. Jin visits the
Pavilion in mufti and demands to meet blind dancer Mei (Ziyi Zhang).
Jin forces his attentions on the demure Mei and after a scuffle both are
arrested by Leo. Mei is freed from prison by a masked insurgent - their
pair escape, and Mei's liberator reveals himself as Jin. The couple flee
into the countryside, pursued by Leo. Needless to say, however, nobody
is quite what they seem...
The title
of House of Flying Daggers is clearly - perhaps too clearly
- calculated to lure in English-speaking fans of cheesy 'chopsocky' epics
- fans of whom Quentin Tarantino (who "presented" Hero to
US and European audiences) is perhaps the most famous personification.
The original Mandarin translates as "Ambushes from Ten Sides,"
- according to Variety magazine, the name of "a classic pipa
virtuoso solo, which describes a battle between two ancient warlords".
While undeniably
virtuouso in certain aspects of its execution, the film itself is no solo
effort - this House is the construct of many diverse hands. Zhang
handles directing duties on his own, but shares story and screenplay credit
with Li Feng and Wang Bin. Crucial technical roles are filled by Zhao
Xiaoding (cinematography), Cheng Long (editing), Shigeru Umebayashi (music),
Huo Tingxiao (production design), Han Zhong (art direction), Emi Wada
(costumes), Tony Ching Siu-tung (action director) and Li Cai (martial
arts co-ordinator). It all adds up to a sumptuous, often opulent package
- even the subtitles look flawless and expensive.
In a couple
of areas, House of Flying Daggers falls a little short of its predecessor
Hero - though it often looks very good, no-one is going to accuse
this picture of being "the most beautiful ever made",
and Zhao's cinematography isn't really in the same league as Christopher
Doyle's. In other areas, however, Flying Daggers hits the mark
with a surer aim: the story is rather less nightmarishly tricky to keep
straight (especially as western audiences are getting the full two-hour
version, whereas we had to decipher a radically chopped-down Hero
which often risked elliptical opacity). Zhang and his fellow scriptwriters,
meanwhile, foreground the romantic elements of the story - even more so
than Ang Lee in Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the wuxia (swordplay &
chivalry) crossover which kicked open the door through which Zhang has
so confidently bounded.
Crouching
Tiger also served to introduce many audiences to a youthful Ziyi Zhang
(the actress has recently adopted western name-order, with surname last),
who managed to upstage her older co-stars Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh
in a performance which many reckoned deserved Oscar recognition. Though
confined to a relatively peripheral role in Hero, she's front and
centre this time and has developed into a woman of impressive abilities
and gifts - luminously beautiful, she gets to show off her skills in dance,
martial-arts and acting as the convincingly blind Mei.
The talents
of actress Zhang (no relation to director Zhang) are crucial to the success
of House of Flying Daggers, as her character is the apex of a love-triangle
that takes on increasingly epic dimensions as the story sweeps to its
tragic conclusion on a snowy meadow - filmed, for reasons which aren't
exactly clear, in Ukraine. The three main protagonists have the action
to themselves - quite a relief after two hours in which our heroes and
heroine have, time and again, found themselves surrounded by countless
armed opponents.
The structure
of these 'peril' set-pieces is virtually identical: one or two valiant
fighters are cornered and surrounded; as their enemies move in for the
kill, they are picked off by reinforcements who turn up at the very last
second (it's an identical format to that deployed by Peter Jackson throughout
the Lord of the Rings
movies). Likewise, while Jin and Mei are relentlessly accurate
shots, their cannon-fodder opponents have consistently lousy aim.
But this kind
of thing goes with the territory - and House of Flying Daggers is
emphatically striving to be mainstream, crowdpleasing, fantastical entertainment.
Zhang's style is somewhat old-fashioned - he's rather too fond of slow
motion - but he does achieve a handful of genuinely ecstatic moments along
the way, though it's a shame he saw fit to include harrowing footage of
horses stumbling painfully to the ground. We also get numerous examples
of the classic "waiting warriors" syndrome, in which a single
individual is able to take on a dozen foes because only one of said foes
moves in to attack at any one time - his pals hang back for no good reason
other than to ensure the individual under attack is able to live on to
the next scene: always outnumbered, never outgunned, as they say on the
terraces.
2nd November,
2004
[seen 28th October 2004 : Odeon West End, London : press show - London
Film Festival]
by Neil
Young
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