Quick review:
Saw two interesting films last weekend: Hero, a film by Zhang Yimou, and Vanity Fair, Mira Nair's latest film.
Hero, visually, is a stunning film. Beautiful (and very zen) compositions, and amazing fight choreography, in the style of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It also plays with a Rashomon-style narrative structure, with multiple, contradictory story-lines (which are color-coded!), showing the slippery nature of reality, and the "truth."
What I found most interesting were the scenes set at the calligraphy school. There the main character, known as Nameless, comes to kill an assassin. Nameless is convinced that he can learn the secret to his swordplay, his fatal flaw, by studying his calligraphy brush-stroke. First, the idea that we can learn someone's character, or soul, through hand-writing, is one that fascinates me. But then it gets more interesting when the school comes under attack and the calligraphers calmly do their heroic scribal work while arrows fly about them, continuing to write even when arrows land in their backs. The implication is that not only can we learn someone's soul from their hand-writing, but through dogged writing, the scribes can save the world!
As the digital world slowly supplants older forms of writing, I feel a nostalgia for hand-writing. If hand-writing really reveals the soul, isn't it a shame that we don't hand-write anymore? And if hand-writing can save the nation (by building character), shouldn't we somehow try to save it? The film touches on this concern, this nostalgia, which of course reflects an anxiety, that something valuable will be lost in the onrush of the new.
I'm excited that I have a new director to explore (never having seen any Zhang Yimou films). A film well worth seeing, especially for those, like myself, who like the choreography more than the fight in the fight choreography, and don't like a lot of blood (for those that do, go see Kill Bill).