We saw The House of Flying Daggers last night. It is without a doubt one of the most beautiful looking films ever made. Every single frame is art gallery quality photography. The action is over the top. Besides the amazing martial arts that you would expect from Zhang Ziyi of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame, director Zhang Yimou uses digital effects to show arrows in flight and the flying daggers in the title.
Where the movie breaks down a little bit, is the story. It's over the top in an operatic sort of way. There are double and triple crosses. Deceptions on top of deceptions. The love triangle that brings the film to its bloody climax seems hard to believe. The movie has spent its resources on the lush visuals, and not on the narrative that explains the dynamic of love. Why is Jin in love with Mei, besides the fact that she's hot and knows kung fu? I don't know. As far as I can tell that's why Leo loves her too. Even so, this film is much more coherent than Zhang Yimou's last film, Hero.
Halfway through the film, I realized that this was a movie adaptation of the Chinese martial arts novelettes that my father constantly read when I was a kid. I couldn't read a single word of them, but I remember the cover paintings. I kept wishing that just once, I'd flip open the book and it'd be a comic book that I could make sense of. There always seemed to be a man in flowing robes riding on a swift horse while brandishing a broadsword. Looking up on that screen last night, those covers had come to life.
It also occurred to me why all the old kung fu movie dialogue is composed of the fighters naming their moves. Before there were kung fu movies, there were kung fu novels. You had to have that play by play in the text. Finally when the movies were made, people could see these moves that they'd read about for all these years. That's why my father (who knows no kung fu) was able to name all of my moves when I performed some routines for him.
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