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Formal
beauty: Cheung in Hero.
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A
Classic Parable
By
Ann Morrow
Hero
Directed
by Zhang Yimou
In Hero, a fable set in the third century B.C., the
pivotal swordfight takes place in a chess pavilion. At the
urging of the combatants, a blind musician continues to play
his stringed gin while the warriors feint, lunge, and
leap with impossible strength. The piercing music is appropriate,
since the ensuing battle, between a master assassin with no
name (Jet Li), and his equally skilled adversary from another
province (Donnie Yen), is as much psychological as it is physical.
At one point, Nameless hurtles through the air like an unleashed
arrow, his sword slicing through a raindrop with surgical
precision. Their slightly superhuman maneuvers convey the
intensity of their concentration, yet both men appear to be
perfectly tranquil. To them, vanquishing an opponent is an
art form like calligraphy or lovemaking.
An Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film in 2003 (the film’s
release was inexplicably held back by Miramax), Hero
is the first martial-arts film from the great Chinese filmmaker
Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern). As such, it elevates
the genre to heights of visual lyricism beyond even those
of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Although
Ang Lee’s lavishly designed hit is a reference for Hero,
Yimou’s inspiration is Kurosawa’s Rashomon: In Hero,
the same events are told in differing versions, sometimes
by the same people. Since the CGI oomph of the wu xui
fight scenes also represents the heightened emotions of memory,
the exaggerated grace and strength of the combatants creates
an alternate reality, one that is astoundingly gorgeous as
well as thrillingly kinetic.
Having defeated the three greatest assassins in the seven
kingdoms, Nameless is presented to the King of Qin (Daoming
Chen) for his reward. The King is waging a brutal war on the
other kingdoms to set himself up as emperor of all of China,
and is especially appreciative of how a single assassin can
be more dangerous than an entire army. To protect himself
from assassination attempts, he keeps everyone at a distance
of 100 feet, but to honor Nameless, he allows him to approach
to 20 feet, and then 10. Spellbound, the king listens while
Nameless recounts his battles with Broken Sword (Tony Leung)
and Falling Snow (Maggie Cheung), who are lovers, and their
comrade Sky (Yen). As shown in flashback, Nameless earns the
couple’s trust by helping to defend a calligraphy school from
attack by thousands of imperial archers. Whirling like wizardly
dervishes, Nameless and Snow deflect rainstorms of arrows.
At the same time, Sword practices his brush strokes as if
casting a spell, and indeed, the magic of the written word
will eventually supplant the power of the sword.
The treachery required to overcome the King’s most dangerous
enemies is worthy of an opera, and the film creates a hothouse
tension that escalates as the King becomes suspicious of Nameless’
incredible stories, and posits a sequence of events of his
own. Conflicts are shown and shown again with increasing amazement.
From the somewhat realistic showdown with Sky, the battles
become more fantastical, climaxing with a duel on a lake to
rival the treetop battle in Crouching Tiger: The swordsmen
skip over the water’s surface like stones or soar above it
as if being propelled by invisible jet streams.
The breathtaking cinematography is by the great Christopher
Doyle, whose atmospheric realism runs from In the Mood
for Love to Rabbit-Proof Fence. The boldly saturated
color schemes, however, are noticeably the work of Yimou,
and each set piece is awash in a single color denoting a state
of consciousness—the final chapter unfolds in pale green,
representing acceptance and resolution. The art direction
is equally sublime: Hero is just as much a homage to
the beauty of China, in its landscapes (from verdant mountains
to shimmering desert), culture (notice the terra-cotta statues
holding candles around the king’s dais), and people (the all-star
cast is as attractive as it is talented). In one luxuriant
shot, Li’s hair cascades down his red-silk robe like a rivulet
of ink.
Daoming as the King is impressive, and Leung and Cheung are
magnificent in largely symbolic roles. Yet the most passionate
encounter is between Snow and Sword’s adoring protégé, Moon
(Ziyi Zhang, the firecracker princess from Crouching Tiger).
As they square off amid a flurry of leaves that change color
with a fury, the level of skill displayed by the two women
seems to be dictated by their ability to control their jealousy.
It’s one of the few scenes to break through the director’s
classicism—due to its formal structure, Hero isn’t
quite as involving as Yimou’s best work.
As a moral parable, however, it resonates to the current day.
Though King Zheng was a ruthless tyrant, his unification of
China ended centuries of territorial bloodshed. The conundrum
of his meteoric reign has been the subject of two large-scale
Chinese epics (The Emperor and the Assassin and The
Emperor’s Shadow), neither of which captured the lasting
import of the Qin dynasty. Hero’s greatest feat is
that its martial philosophy is as memorable as its martial
artistry.
Hank
& Edith & Jack & Terry
We
Don’t Live Here Anymore
Directed
by John Curran
Based on a pair of novellas by Andre Dubus, We Don’t Live
Here Anymore is a powerful evocation of adultery in a
quiet New England college town. The quasi-quaintness of this
setup is deceptive; the hamlet is home to a second-rate community
college, where professors Jack Linden (Mark Ruffalo) and Hank
Evans (Peter Krause) bore already-uninspired students with
pseudo-
intellectual riffs on Dostoyevsky or, in the case of Hank,
his own wretched attempts at fiction. Jack’s wife Terry (Laura
Dern) fights a perpetually losing battle, first against the
mundane nature of housework, but eventually against the encroaching
realization of Jack’s affair with Hank’s wife Edith (Naomi
Watts).
Set against the backdrop of three of the Lindens’ huge domestic
spats, after which Terry scrubs and mends and begs forgiveness,
We Don’t spans the time it takes for Terry to let her
anger spew forth. Dern makes the wait worthwhile, at least
in part because hers is the only truly sympathetic creature
of the four main characters. Essentially a decent, savvy woman
who just happens to be hopelessly in love with Jack, she at
first recoils from the burgeoning truth that her husband’s
incessant trips to the library, or the office, or for a run
with Hank, simply are lies to cover his philandering. Her
first timid efforts to talk to Jack, and each subsequent,
more forthright attempt, are blocked by his attacking her
for her inability to keep a clean house, or for forgetting
to change their child’s wet bedclothes. There is a riveting
moment late in the film in which Terry, claws finally bared,
demands to know why Jack can’t just love her for who she is,
and not what she does. It’s a raw moment in which already
tense audience members clutch chair arms and try not to glance
at the person seated next to them.
Adapted by Larry Gross and directed by John Curran, We
Don’t Live Here Anymore is steeped in small-town claustrophobia
and the despair that comes from realizing you aren’t the great
talent you once thought you were—or your mate still believes
you to be. This is especially true of the men. Jack’s self-loathing
and sense of defeat cause him to lash out at Terry, the one
steady in his life, who, in another desperate moment, declares
she would love him even if he were an out-and-out bum. Ruffalo
nicely underplays this difficult role, making it infinitely
believable that he could delude himself into thinking that
a life with Edith, the domestic antithesis of Terry, could
solve everything—and yet not wanting best bud Hank to find
out. Edith, meanwhile, stares endlessly into space when she’s
not planning rendezvous with Jack. As the movie progresses
and the collective unhappiness boils to the point at which
someone has to do something about it, Edith’s hunger
for Jack consumes her, so much so that she begins taking him
in her front hallway or living room, as if this animal contact
will fill her aching need.
Still, Edith’s character, so integral to the Dubus stories,
is here somewhat oblique. At one point Hank commends her for
how far she’s come, which only makes the viewer wonder if
perhaps they met and married when she was in diapers, so unevolved
is her character. Here is a woman who can cook and keep a
beautiful home, but who seemingly has no outside interests.
(In contrast, Terry seems to love reading, movies, activities
with the family, etc.) Edith’s mopiness is compounded by her
absolute loopiness with Jack—she spends their noncarnal moments
dissing Hank, wondering about how they’ll get found out, plotting
bizarre scenarios, all of which takes the bloom off Jack’s
post-coital rose. Another problem is Krause’s portrayal of
Hank, an essentially bastard-like character who plays fast
and easy with issues like fidelity and loyalty. Basically,
Hank is lazy, both as a husband and as a man, and yet there’s
supposed to be an edge of passive-aggressiveness to him. Presumably,
this is what spurs on the tension between him and Edith, and
also between him and Jack, and which sends Hank prowling for
the forlorn Terry. Krause’s interpretation shows a blocked
writer who is often sleepy, sometimes morose, but hardly ever
charming.
The lack of edge in this character is shared, to some extent,
by the film as a whole, which—for all its intricacies and
balanced textures and Dern’s fascinating, dead-on performance—is
just too subtle. Granted, these are married couples whose
lives have absorbed boredom and devolved into uninterest,
for whom the professional or creative life is devoid of promise.
And yet, given the extent to which wives like Terry and Edith
go, historically, to avoid confrontation, one would think
that the reverberations from their respective adulteries would
make some sort of impact on household equilibrium. Without
much to jar you emotionally, Terry’s long
swallowed-up howl of pain may be directed at Jack, but is
deflected, like a dud paper airplane, off the emptiness that
pervades much of this otherwise admirable movie.
—Laura
Leon
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