A Touch of Zen is one of the most inventive martial arts films you’ll see. It combines a bunch of genres, including the historic Samurai films of Japan, haunted house horror, and the classic hero’s journey adventure films. Plus it adds it’s own styles have been hugely influential on later martial arts films. There’s plenty of epic widescreen landscape shots, bouncing characters (that you’ll also see most noticeably in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and innovative editing to create some stunning CGI-free action sequences. On top of that, it focuses on a powerful female fugitive and an unstoppable Buddhist monk. It’s all shot from the perspective of a regular guy like us to bring us into the action. It’s one of the best wuxia films you’ll see.
You may have seen a lot of films without really paying attention to how they’re put together. But to get the most out of The Assassin you’ll need to become aware of the subtleties on camera. Everything is set up to celebrate the art of the assassin and it’s just beautiful!
Why Watch The Assassin?
It’s one of the most beautiful films of the 2010s!
To immerse yourself in 8th Century China
If you’re a fan of martial arts and want to see the art of an assassin
Because it Hou Hsiao-hsien won Best Director for this film at Cannes
The Breakdown
The Assassin is set in 8th century China when the Tang dynasty is in decline. It’s based on the story of Nie Yinniang written by Pei Xing, a writer from Tang dynasty era China. Sometimes knowing the origin material of the film isn’t that important, but knowing the story of Nie Yinniang will help you get the most out of watching The Assassin. Check out a short summary below!
Summary of Nie Yinniang
(Mostly based on info from the internet – for more in depth summary and background to The Assassin check out this article on Taipei Notes)
The Tang crown prince sends his tenth daughter Princess Jiacheng and her twin sister to a nunnery for safety (from the Anlushan rebellion). Princess Jiacheng returns home when it’s safe, but her sister stays on and leads an order of assassins.
Later on, Princess Jiacheng marries Tian Xu (who holds power in the Weibo district of China) to secure peace in the region. The Princess adopts Tian Ji-an and gives birth to Yinniang, who both grow up as childhood friends. When they’re both older, the Princess gives two jade disks to Tian Ji-an and Yinniang to symbolize their future marriage. However, their relationship is broken off when Tian Xu marries his son to the daughter of one of his strongest allies. Yinniang is then sent to the Taoist nunnery to live with Princess Jiacheng’s assassin twin sister. She later returns when her old childhood friend has taken over from his father on orders to assassinate him.
The Breakdown continued
The Assassin is not like your usual martial arts film. Firstly, it helps to have a bit of background (as written above) as Hsiao-hsien rarely delves into any exposition. Secondly, the whole film is a piece of subtle beauty geared to celebrate the art of the assassin. And before you stop reading because I’m sounding a bit pretentious, I’ll try and demonstrate why.
For most of the film, the only thing you’ll hear is nature, from birds singing to the wind blowing. Similarly, for the most part, the shots are mid-distance and still. Both these things create calmness as the sounds are natural and the pictures are still. Think of the ambience/tone it creates as a still lake.
The stillness creates an environment for the assassin to showcase her skills. She must do her job without disturbing the serenity of her environment, or using our analogy, without splashing into the lake. And of course, she does this well. Firstly, she sneaks around the house of Tian Ji-an without making any noise (you’ll always hear the same natural noises in the background). Secondly, the director rarely breaks from mid-distance shots. When he does for the action scenes, the assassin deals with her victims quickly to avoid creating a disturbance or ripple. She never sticks out. Yinniang and the director, showcase the art of the assassin.
Conclusion
I’m not sure how this film was overlooked by the Academy Awards after picking up the Best Director at Cannes. Perhaps, because many viewers come out a bit confused as the director chooses not to offer too much exposition.
If you take a moment to read up a bit of background before you watch this film (see above) and are up for delving deeper into a film than usual, by watching it more than once, this may well become one of your favorite films.
If you’re looking for some of the most awesome stunts and acrobatics you can see on screen, you’ve come to the right place. Ong Bak is a martial arts stunts fest that you can watch again and again. Yes,the script is a little basic and predictable, but, ultimately you won’t care, because this film is so much fun to watch. It’s a thrill ride from start to finish.
As a parallel to the community of the Hong Kong territory in the 1980s, the walls of Kowloon City, the one-time densest populated living area in the world, served opposing purposes. To keep out and to keep in; to bridge divides equally as to rupture connections. An endless inspiration in media as an enclave in which culture can evolve independently, featured in the spread that encompasses manga, video games, painting and literature, it now marks the second-highest grossing domestic film in Hong Kong’s history.
Raymond Lam’s Lok leads Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, the first in a proposed (and greenlit) blockbuster martial arts trilogy by Soi Cheang. A runaway refugee, desperately seeking board and security, finds himself under the support and practical tutelage of triad leader Cyclone (Louis Koo). He bonds with a small cohort of three other younger generational action talents to defend the sanctuary of the Walled City from the threatened invasion of Mr. Big (Sammo Hung) in a series of combative and political face-offs that turn familial, and thoroughly personal.
Twilight of the Warriors kicks off with an initial fight that may be its best, a multi-various cat-and-mouse chase with Lok on the run using every possible element at his disposal – yanked metal rebar slams into wood, scaffolding wrenched apart with makeshift blades, human beings thrown into concrete like CGI monkey limbs. What could be easily mistaken for vibes is Cheung Ka-fai’s seamlessly done edit job, choreographed between cuts and music, a balanced display of frenetic weaponry language that spontaneously creates new words.
It is immediately apparent that Twilight of the Warriors has two amazingly large graces, the second its inspiringly recreated production design work. Modeled after the original architecture, torn down in 1993, every lived-in detail about Cheang’s sets feel less as practical as they do authentic. Glances of printed copy, taped art and store shop advertisement go by while characters leap and fall between awnings and onto telephone wire, yet Cheang keeps a steady-enough alley-aligned view to give a sense of encampment that could never have been built overnight. The residents of Kowloon wear rags and garments in equal measure in a land where there is no outside, only the reconfiguration of value inside.
To make all of this out of Cheang’s aesthetic is entirely the point – to standalone, Twilight of the Warriors is book-ended by chapters of beginning and end to Lok’s journey, a sized-down epic that brings peasant into the coincidental alignment of civil royalty. This is the sort of drama that Westerners will easily align with Star Wars-types – a greater evil defeated, another protégé of said evil taking its place, the cycle continuing in formal ‘unrest’ fashion until the old guard is killed off, leading the way for a new guard to inhabit their trauma.
Tale as old as time, but for the modern Hong Kong (and broader Chinese) audience, Twilight of the Warriors hearkens to a stubborn desire, the kind that consciously fights in support of forgotten art. By the final climatic clash of Twilight, which draws on its protagonists to problem-solve their way out of a villain grown to American superhero-levels of untenable malevolence, Kowloon City has been in and out of beleaguered rule, torn between bureaucratic guards that all seek to support their own in a sanctuary bent keenly on living free from marginalization.
The cycle of evil self-perpetuates the cycle of good, as will the cycle of art and artists keep boosting Cheang and his contemporaries who want to put in the good effort to make an homage to cultural institution. Therein lies the philosophy of the once towering walled-complex – the sun never set on its story because it never organically rose there to begin with.
Seen at AMC Atlantic Times Square 14, Monterey Park
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