? Despite a title
that sounds like an old Charlie Chan movie, this is actually the latest from
China’s most prominent director, Zhang Yimou. Like his recent Hero and House
of Flying Daggers, it’s a period film that emphasizes China’s imperial
culture and features some large-scale action sequences. It also reunites Zhang
with his early 1990s leading lady, Gong Li. The emperor is played by Chow
Yun-Fat. As with Flying Daggers, it’s set during the Tang Dynasty (in
928 A.D.), but the plot is less mythical.
+ Palace scenes of
stunning color and beauty dominate the movie’s first half, which depicts the
veneer of formality that surrounds the royal family and sets up the violent
confrontations that dominate the later scenes. The cinematography emphasizes
patterns that are symbolic of a highly ceremonial, hierarchical culture. The
story hinges on the ambitions and loyalties of the emperor’s three sons and the
revelations of family secrets. There’s little of the stylized swordplay of Hero
and Daggers, but the climactic battle scene near the end, which involves
thousands of fighters, arrows, shields, and spears, is remarkable.
- The story is
presented as a classic tragedy, yet the thousands of soldiers who die merely as
a by-product of family squabbles by the royals are altogether anonymous.
(Though perhaps that’s the message of the film.) Rather, it’s the queen who
caused all the trouble with whom we are supposed to empathize.
= ***3/4 Zhang seems
to shift effortlessly from historical epics like this one and smaller
contemporary movies like Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, released in the US a few months ago. If you’re at all a fan of this kind of movie, it’s a
must-see.
