REVIEWED - HERO (YING XIONG): 'CRITICS are calling Hero the most beautiful film ever made!" the advertising doesn't quite squeal, writes Donald Clarke.
And, yes, Zang Yimou's opulent Chinese film, originally released in 2002 and subsequently picked up by Miramax following prodding by Quentin Tarantino, comes close to living up to such pronouncements.
Rashomon by way of Birth of a Nation, Hero follows a conversation between a nameless warrior (Jet Li) and the third century BC King of Qin (Chen Dao Ming) - later the first emperor of China - during a time of great conflict. The fearless swordsman has, he claims, slain the three assassins most dangerous to the monarch: Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung), Broken Sword (Tony Leung), and Sky (Donnie Yen). Later the king puts forward a different interpretation of events. Then another version is proposed. And so forth.
Each story is precisely colour-coded - warm red, pistachio green, a rather nasty peacock shade that would better have remained on 1980s wallpaper - and makes use of nature to consistently overwhelming effect. Shot in uncharacteristically flamboyant fashion by the great Christopher Doyle, Hero treats us to masses of dancing leaves, a hemisphere of descending arrows and a glorious swordfight carried out by antagonists dancing across a beautiful lake.
The picture sometimes teeters on the edge of kitsch, but never quite succumbs. How much aggressive splendour can an audience take? Precisely this amount and no more, I would suggest. Every time the film looks as if it is about to lunge into silliness, it shifts down-gear for a moment and we are allowed the chance to take a breath.
During those quieter interludes, it is worth brooding on the intriguing political messages of Hero. Zang Yimou, the director of Ju Dou and Red Sorghum, has had his fair share of battles with the communist authorities down through the years, but Hero would satisfy any old-school Maoist (and, to be fair, more benign nationalists) in its celebration of Chinese unity. Films rarely get more grandiosely patriotic without the word "triumph" in their titles.
Still, Hero works best as sheer spectacle and, being so successful in that area, further whets the appetite for the director's upcoming House of Flying Daggers.
