 |
Actors/Actresses |
 |
|
|
|
 |
Categories |
|
|
|
|
IN his impressively mounted, though not always convincing, arguments in Film International (March 2004), Evans Chan contended that Zhang Yimou’s Hero is the “stupendous summation” of the “glaring streak of pernicious apology for a totalitarian regime” evident in some of his work.
In that film, four assassins conspire so that one of them gains the confidence of the King of Qin, and therefore, the opportunity to slay him. Told in a maze of colour-coded narrative strands, the story weaves its way to the climax whereupon the assassin played by Jet Li – sword in hand and poised to strike – gives up his mission, and his life, for the greater good, having been convinced by the would-be emperor’s vision.
“The pseudo-Rashomonesque structure is not meant to examine motivations, rationalisations, or the unreliability of human perception. It is an unfolding plot device that leads us to the final epiphany – the assassin(s) must die.”
The impulse of the film, Chan wrote, “can be called fascist – it promotes a personality cult that claims oneness with the progression of the national destiny, which inspires wilful, bloody sacrifices.”
Jet Li in Hero, Zhang Yimou’s cleverest and most controversial work.
I would argue that Chan’s interpretation is just one possible reading – and the most obvious at that. There’s an oft-quoted saying about travelling that may apply when one engages Hero: It’s the journey and not the destination that counts.
To wit, it isn’t how the film concludes that matters, given the kind of restraint Zhang has to work under, but what the film presents us with. And what Hero presents us with is many points of view. In its complex narrative we find layers of truth and shades of meaning. Read this way, Hero, rather than a reinvention of the founding myth of China, as Chan would have it, is about the competing narratives that go into the tumultuous formation of the national identity.
The rebels in the movie are reviled (red) idealised (blue), humanised (green), torn asunder (white) and, finally, sacrificed (black). The colourful narratives are not, unlike Kurosawa’s Rashomon, a commentary on the human inability to tell the truth precisely because that is not their purpose. What they represent, I think, is a clamouring of voices that are ultimately eliminated one by one in the ruthless logic of power.
In one of the most compelling scenes in the film, the king is torn between letting the interloper who has just spared his life get off scot-free or liquidating him as his edicts dictate – only to run into the implacable Greek-like chorus of his anonymous courtiers who chant for the intruder’s death. He no longer has a choice.
The tyrant’s decrees, once issued, outweighs even his royal self. Power has a logic all its own, and once unleashed, it is devastating.
| Extra Information: |
|
For more information, please visit this related webpage. |
| Article Statistics: |
| Viewed:718 |
|
|
|
|
|
More News 
