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Hero
One of the other things I like about hot weather is that it motivates me to actually go to the movies, something I love, but I can go through periods of never quite going.
Hero is the latest from Zhang Yimou, the director who gave us Raise the Red Lantern and many other movies I've never seen. This is his first martial arts movie and would seem to owe quite a bit to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, at the very least in terms of US-audience, but brings his own attention to spare detail and beauty to the genre.
It is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen. The use of color reminded me of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, but was very bright, open and airy, as opposed to the sodden texture of Peter Greenaway's interiors.
The narrative could be mistaken as Rashomon-like, but it is less a changing perspective, and more a stripping away of layers of meaning, deception and interpretation. Chinese martial arts movies often play tricks with time, but in this one time is truly mastered, so that moments span seasons or days or milliseconds, all at the same pace.
The acting is notably wonderful--each of the six major characters has moments of brilliant subtlety and the changes in them from section to section is wonderfully done. The stand-out in this excellent company was Tony Leung as the calligrapher/swordmaster Broken Sword. Each of his moments of realization was beautifully crafted and strikingly real. Ah yes, his face indicated without moving, this truth has opened my eyes and I see a new world.
To be honest, the fight scenes got a little tedious for me, although the choreography was also lush and visual and managed to create very different moods in each scene. My personal favorite was watching Flying Snow fend off thousands of arrows, like a living flame with her red-orange silks billowing around her as she spun and flared.
We went with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gilana, who was really just along for the company and coolth and didn't expect to like the movie at all. In her comments, she writes "I'm not big on martial arts flicks, and I hated Crouching Tiger, but I was totally blown away by this movie." I expected to like it and I was still blown away.
Hero is the latest from Zhang Yimou, the director who gave us Raise the Red Lantern and many other movies I've never seen. This is his first martial arts movie and would seem to owe quite a bit to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, at the very least in terms of US-audience, but brings his own attention to spare detail and beauty to the genre.
It is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen. The use of color reminded me of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, but was very bright, open and airy, as opposed to the sodden texture of Peter Greenaway's interiors.
The narrative could be mistaken as Rashomon-like, but it is less a changing perspective, and more a stripping away of layers of meaning, deception and interpretation. Chinese martial arts movies often play tricks with time, but in this one time is truly mastered, so that moments span seasons or days or milliseconds, all at the same pace.
The acting is notably wonderful--each of the six major characters has moments of brilliant subtlety and the changes in them from section to section is wonderfully done. The stand-out in this excellent company was Tony Leung as the calligrapher/swordmaster Broken Sword. Each of his moments of realization was beautifully crafted and strikingly real. Ah yes, his face indicated without moving, this truth has opened my eyes and I see a new world.
To be honest, the fight scenes got a little tedious for me, although the choreography was also lush and visual and managed to create very different moods in each scene. My personal favorite was watching Flying Snow fend off thousands of arrows, like a living flame with her red-orange silks billowing around her as she spun and flared.
We went with
gilana, who was really just along for the company and coolth and didn't expect to like the movie at all. In her comments, she writes "I'm not big on martial arts flicks, and I hated Crouching Tiger, but I was totally blown away by this movie." I expected to like it and I was still blown away.