The Blade
As a counter point to Wong Kar Wai’s Ashes of
Time, Tsui Hark has concocted a visually stunning sword film. At moments
you wonder if it is a philosophical treatise told in the form of a traditional
sword fighting film or is it a sword film within the veneer of modern philosophical
concepts of alienation and the meaning of life.
The film unfolds within the loose (perhaps
opium induced) narrative structure of Ling (Sang Ni), the daughter of a
sword maker in a small town in a remote province of ancient China. The
recreation of this world feels very authentic. She talks of her flirtatious
affection for two of her father’s workers - Iron Head and On (Chiu Man
Cheuk) but can’t decide which she likes better. All seems idyllic in this
young woman’s life, but soon her life and everyone else’s is turned upside
down and by the end of the film all innocence is gone, everyone has changed
.
Iron Head and On go into town to shop, catch their
first glimpse of the prostitute played by Valerie Chow, and see a monk
killed by some animal hunters who have stopped in the town. This is an
intriguing scene as Tsui Hark plays against our expectations. At first
it appears that the monk with his kung-fu powers will easily defend himself
against such unworthy opponents, but their sheer numbers and cowardly traps
finally bring him down and he is brutally murdered. Much of the rest of
the film also plays against the viewers expectations.
Soon after On, who is an orphan, decides to leave
the small town and look for the killer of his father - the only thing left
of the father is the broken blade he used to protect his infant son from
the killers. This sets up a chain of
events as Ling leaves the compound to stop him from going and is captured
by the hunters. On rescues her in a amazingly harrowing sequence of bear
traps and bamboo. He loses his arm though - thus re-creating the One Armed
Swordsman legend - and disappears over a cliff. He is found by a young
girl and nursed back to health.
At the same time both Iron Head and Ling start
a search for On (or is it more than just that ?) that turns into a journey
through Hell - as a world of thieves, murderers and rapists dominate the
landscape. On meanwhile discovers a half burned sword’s instruction book
and trains to meet the killer of his father. The final conflict
is an amazing duel of speed, swordsmanship and determination.
Tsui Hark truly creates another world in this
film full of incredible images and sounds and almost smells. You can seemingly
taste the dirt and dust in your mouth, feel the fear in the air. The editing
is brilliant and the screen is always full of either magical imagery or
frenetic action. The fighting scenes are done in rapid editing fashion
that are breathtaking.
Now perhaps I praise this film too much especially
considering that the first time I watched it I had a slightly negative
reaction to it. This was primarily because the three main characters feel
so distant, so unemotional, so isolated from each other. I didn’t care
what happened to these characters. The film seemed to be all technique
with little heart. On second viewing though , I was even more overwhelmed
by the technique, by the incredible fluidity of this film; and the apparent
coldness of the characters seemed less emotional detachment as an inability
to declare their true feelings of friendship and loyalty.
At least from my perspective, a film that has
to experienced more than once to be fully appreciated.
My rating for this film:9.0
Reviewed by YTSL
Pity the poor people -- who I know do exist
since I spoke to one a month or so ago! -- who viewed this Tsui Hark directed
and produced effort thinking that they were going to watch either a standard
1970s style kungfu movie or even the kind of "new wave" swordplay drama
that this prolific film-maker churned out in some abundance in the same
decade as this 1995 work. The fact of the matter is that it is not
just the action scenes in this film but also its dramatic sections, underlying
premise and overall story that are so much more realistic, grimmer and
less heroic in style and nature than what members of the audience might
be used to and want.
All in all, one could go as far as to describe
THE BLADE as generally hyper-realistic, ultra-grim and anti-heroic.
Regarding the last point: It's not enough that the film's protagonist
(Ting On comes in the form of the impressive Chiu Man Cheuk) is a factory
worker who is a reluctant hero, at best (in contrast to his much bolder
and respected but less handsome colleague; Iron Head is played by Moses
Chan Ho), and comes to lose an arm by way of an animal trap rather than
at the hands of a kungfu master. Rather, it is also that the tale's
narrator (Ling is the daughter of the chief sword-maker of the factory
in which hot environs Ting On, Iron Head and other muscular young men sweatily
toil) could be said to be mentally as well as intellectually the weakest
-- even if not the youngest and only female -- as well as least developed
character in what could (otherwise) be said to be Tsui's most masculine
offering.
Fans of Tsui Hark's other works (E.g., "Peking
Opera Blues", "Swordsman II", "Once Upon a Time in China", "Green Snake"
and "The Lovers") know that he seeks to communicate serious thoughts and
ideas as well as entertain, and is capable of evoking intense reactions
from viewers. But whereas in many of his other movies, thought-provoking
segments, political messages and scenes of torture, pain, humiliation and
anguish tend to be not only offset but also heightened by their being interspersed
with some tender and comic moments, this is not the case with THE BLADE.
Instead, this work is so relentlessly dark in tone and bereft of good humor
as to cause this (re)viewer to actually feel a strange need to laugh at
things which elsewhere might not be all that funny or ridiculous seeming
(such as the bad timing that came when Iron Head fixates at an inn on the
erotic actions being forced on a woman (Valerie Chow looks alternately
vulnerable and vampish in this role) and, in so doing, ignores and provokes
the violent ire of a drunken man who had been trying to offer to buy him
a drink).
All this dramatic gravity definitely does contribute
to the almost too authentic and grounded feel of THE BLADE. So too
do the movie's psychically or physically blemished characters, chaotic
and unglamorous sets along with the particular unblinking way of filming
that Tsui has opted for here. Then there is the sheer, stark, savage
and earthy interpretation of how one leads life and what one wants out
of it (e.g., the young girl does not seem to love but lust, and want to
bring on competition -- rather than encourage friendship -- between men
for herself).
With regards to the movie's fight scenes:
Although the action is often as swift as it is energetic, feral and violent,
it does not seem inhumanly so. Perhaps most pertinently, there is
little sense of wires being used here by bona fide wushu practitioners
like Chiu Man Cheuk (whose name is rendered as Zhao Wen-Zhou in Mandarin
Chinese) and Xiong Xin-Xin (the man who plays the main villain of this
piece is also sometimes known by Cantonese speakers as Hung Yan-Yan); at
least not in the extravagantly fantastic -- and thus obvious -- way that
caused Jet Li to spin wildly and allowed Brigitte Lin to glide ethereally
in "Swordsman II".
Howard Hampton has called THE BLADE Tsui Hark's
"almost exhaustingly ferocious answer film to Wong (Kar Wai)'s "Ashes of
Time"". Viewed from a certain standpoint, it can seem like the Canton-born,
Saigon-raised auteur was not only bidding here to compete with Wong but
also was mocking the Shanghai-born, Hong Kong-raised filmmaker's trademark
techniques, outlooks and obsessions to some good effect. Unfortunately,
it seems like Tsui sought to do so on Wong's rather than his own familiar
or revolutionary terms. To be sure, the former did end up with a
beautiful yet brutal picture that is equally impressive as a piece of cinematic
work as many of Wong's and his own previous efforts. But when directly
compared with what I believe to be Wong's masterpiece, I find THE BLADE
to be more soul-less than soulful, devoid of a genuinely affecting emotional
center (provided in "Ashes of Time" by The Woman), and too full of alienating
-- rather than alienated -- individuals; whose woes can be said to be (more)
deserving of our sympathy yet with whom I could not empathize in the way
that I did with each and every of the eight principal characters in Wong's
indulgent post-modern epic.
My rating for the film: 8.5.