Hero/Ying xiong

The film that was nominated for the 2002 Best Foreign Film Oscar receives wide theatrical release in the United States in an odd situation. Though the film has made more than 100 million worldwide and is available in the Far East on DVD the film has just released here in the US to great fanfare. In the aftermath of the success of Kill Bill volumes one and two Quentin Tarantino has worked to get some of his favorites released here in the US. The US is the richer for it. The funniest thing I saw about this film were the signs at the box office, ‘Hero contains subtitles’. Yes, Hero is a foreign film, a Chinese picture that has subtitles, it requires some minimal reading, and perhaps there are people at the local Cineplex that are turned off by reading in their movies. But the subtitles should not be a deterrent to seeing this film, it is an action movie, and the subtitled details are an afterthought.

Hero evokes the fantasy mystical world of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon where amazing swordsman live who can fly through the tree tops, walk on water, and run up the sides of a building. Like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon the story of the film and the character interaction is secondary to the filmmaking and the spectacle. The story is set as a fable of events that allowed the first emperor of China to rise to power out of the civil war of competing warlords. It tells the story of a great warrior Nameless who has taken on three of the greatest warriors of the age, Sky, Flying Snow, and Broken Sword. This great feat has gained him an audience with the warlord of Qin and it is here that Nameless relates his heroic story. That is about the extent of the narrative of the film, nearly everything is told in flashback, some things are told multiple times in multiple vivid hues, and they all lead back to Nameless alone with the warlord.

The idea of a mysterious nameless hero is not new to the western audience; it is reminiscent of the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns and Eastwood’s Man with No Name. Nor is the idea of telling one story repeatedly with different interpretations based on the teller and the motives of the one telling the story. Neither does the swordplay introduce anything new since the release of films like Crouching Tiger. This film does not tread new ground, but it revisits many devices of storytelling with clarity and beauty.

The first fight between Nameless and Sky owes a lot to The Matrix with 360 degree rotation, stop motion, and the focus on not only the fighting, but on the disturbance to the atmosphere around them. Here the combatants flick individual drops of water at each other. Later there are battles among flying spears, whirling leaves, and on the surface of a lake. One of the most interesting is between Maggie Cheung and Ziyi Zhang which does not fit into the storyline well but shows both of them whirling through the air through fiery orange leaves in bright red clothes flowing out behind them. It is scenes lie this that provide beauty and are both the strength and weakness of the film. Each one is stunning and each retelling relies on a different dominant color moving from red to blue to white to green.

Now I have heard a number of complaints about this film, that it is too fanciful, that if it is said to represent history that it should be better grounded in reality, or that the film borders on corny in its exuberant swordplay. I tend to disagree. This film genre embraces over-the-top action and almost corny characters with relish. The storyline is kept to a minimum, usually a list of people to be killed. All of the elements that were so enjoyed in Kill Bill are evident in this genre that inspired it. It is the audience that has to embrace the experience of these films in their beauty and grandeur, and yes in their silliness and unlikeliness. That is why films require a suspension of disbelief. Like the fight among the leaves that I mentioned earlier, the scenes are beautiful standing alone, they just don’t always link together in a concise way.

This film was a glorious celebration of what is achievable in film today and should be watched as such. I am sure that the film will lose value in translation to television which is why it is so wonderful that this film did receive a theatrical release in the United States even if it is well after its initial release. Stories about personal sacrifice and the morals of the warrior class do not always go over well in the west, but this time Hero comes out a winner.