let's talk about zhang yimou's "hero"

hahaha i thouhgt this was a prank from an imdb data entry workslave.

i saw this on DVD (kim's had it a while back). i thought it was v. uninvolving as drama, aestheticized in the extreme. which i guess is the point, although selling it as tiger/dragon II seems like a false promise. yimou takes one aspect of ang lee's film (an aspect that contributed to its success, to be sure) and makes it hero's whole reason for being. hoberman's review seems pretty on-point in observing both the film's limits and its merits, though i have to admit on video it was hard to be more than superficially impressed by the latter.

as for the ideology, it was concocted no doubt to be non-specific enough to simultaneously function broadly as pro-PRC but not even approach offending international sensibilities (much of its funding came from the amercian studios). probably it means something different to chinese--who have by now learned to understand certain retellings of chinese history as lessons for the present--and to others.

OH MY GOD DID I SAY THAT?

-- s1ocki (slytus...) (webmail), August 30th, 2004 12:27 AM. (slutsky) (later) (link)
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no, the new one, clean where she plays an ex-junkie rock star or something

oh im only in china to visit my parents.. i dont really live here (hence me stocking up on cheapo dvds [50p each] for the few months im here).

*if anybody knows what kind of instrument that was and how I might find one, that would be KICK-ASS

And yea _Hero_ was unbelievably gorgeous & I totally got behind the sentiment (though my knowledge of world affairs & world history is sorely lacking, so I don't know how it dovetails w/ what's actually happened over thar). I also thought it was a bit lacking in the dramatics dept. UNTIL the kinda obvious twist about 30-45 minutes in, and then I was totally hooked (even w/ the row of asshats in the back of the theatre snickering throughout the entire flick) ("like OMG they're like floating & tiptoeing how lame" SHUT UP!).

I'm glad that it was the #1 flick this week, as I saw NO promos for it on TV (as opposed to 283 promos for _Anacondas: Sir Mix A Lot's Revenge_), and was wary of its potential draw in the States given the number of times its release was pushed back & the lack of promo push (at least in my podunky locale).

Sorry if I'm being pedantic.

I did like it though, even it did get to be a bit numbing by the end. The chess house was my favorite fight scene, but the one with the leaves was gorgeous.

*the metallic 'ping's when Broken Sword and Nameless were pingponging that drop of water
*the sound of the flames between Nameless and the King flickering
*the rumble of the courtiers & soldiers coming up the steps

I think the big thing with the soundtrack was how well it used it's LACK OF musical score in most places, opting instead to magnify to ginormous clarity all the atmospheric sounds, almost as though those sounds (the water drops, the wind in the leaves, etc.) WERE the musical score.

i think that the biggest similarity between this film and crouching tiger is that they are largely action films from directors not known for action films.

i need to see this on the big screen again (i've had the DVD for almost a year).

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i hoe so, because as noted above, i was kind of disappointed by it on video. actually i felt like it was hitting me over the head with a hammer in terms of visual design. i don't know if that effect would be alleviate or accentuated if i saw it on the big screen.

It was very lovely to look at, though. I loved the look of the yellow leaves and the green lakes and hills, probably more than anything else in the movie.

oh yeah, according somebody on IMDB "in the flashbacks, the characters' costumes go from red (imagination) to blue (perceived reality) to white (truth). in the final flashback, the costumes are green (enlightenment/peace)."

i think i'll go see this a few more times when it hits the dollar theater. it's just so pretty and nice sounding.

Mon Aug 30,10:22 PM ET
Harvey Weinstein, STAFF
The success of "Hero" this past weekend, the biggest opening weekend ever for an Asian film, underscores Miramax's long-term commitment to Asian cinema.

Many people have asked why we didn't release "Hero" until just over a year and a half after its Chinese release. I'd like to set the record straight.
We have released films from several of the great masters of Chinese cinema - Chen Kaige's "Farewell My Concubine," Yuen Woo-Ping's "Iron Monkey," Wong Kar-Wai's "Chunking Express" and Zhang Yimou's "Ju Dou," the first Chinese- language film ever nominated for the Oscar. We have released the most successful Japanese film in this country, "Shall We Dance" and we gave the first major U.S. release to a Japanese anime film. Hayao Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke."
My own personal love affair with Asian cinema began well over a decade ago when I read Dave Kehr in the Chicago Tribune and Jay Carr in the Boston Globe describe Asian film series at repertory houses. I began tracking down these films and watching them.
But my real education in Asian cinema began when I met Quentin Tarantino, whose own love affair with these films is well known. Just as later, Marty Scorsese taught me about the great silent films and films from the '30s and '40s when we were making "Gangs of New York," Quentin gave me a master's knowledge of Asian cinema from Jackie Chan (news) to Jet Li to Tsui Hark and King Hu. Every Saturday night, the prints would come to my screening room. Then to cap it all off, I met Sir Run Run Shaw and had a wonderful conversation with him about the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema.
When I was offered the opportunity to co-produce and co-finance "Hero," and work with a director I have admired immensely since I saw "Ju Dou" in a cubicle in the basement of the Cannes Palais in 1990, I jumped at the chance.
I am very proud that our sizable investment in the film ensured that his magnificent vision would come to life. We envisioned a marketing campaign similar to that of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," with a full Oscar push. (And the great reviews the film has received show that our initial inclinations were correct.)
However, when the film was almost completed, we got some disappointing news. It was impossible for us to release the film at the end of 2002 (we weren't even delivered the film until December). But the producers had decided to release the film for one week at the end of October 2002 to qualify if for the Oscars (news - web sites). This was now going to make the film ineligible in all categories in the 2003 Oscar race if "Hero" was nominated in 2002 for foreign-language film (which it was).
Our strategy of giving the film a full Oscar push was impossible. Then we hit another roadblock. We scheduled the film in August 2003, but the Jackie Chan starrer "The Medallion" moved onto our date. We knew it was imperative to distance the film from any other martial-arts films. We needed to be alone in the marketplace. At this point, Quentin Tarantino stepped in and offered to present the film and suggested we attach the trailer to "Kill Bill" Vols. 1 and 2, both in theatrical release and in home video release. This gave us a unique opportunity to hit the perfect audience for "Hero" several times and Quentin's generous offer to present the film gave the film a commercial stamp of approval.
Some people have suggested that the availability of illegal imports of "Hero" on the Internet would have an effect on the box office. Clearly this was not the case and in fact our surveys showed that few audience members had seen the film on DVD. We have successfully cracked down on this practice, and have kept the sales of these DVDs to a few hundred enterprising Asian film fans. Piracy is a hugely important issue for our business and I realize now that concerns about piracy in China may have led the producers to release the film as soon as it was completed.
We have always tried to be innovators at Miramax. When we released a restored version of Yuen Woo-Ping's kung-fu classic "Iron Monkey" in the fall of 2001 it was almost 10 years old and we knew that some DVDs had been available before we purchased the rights.
Our innovations have not always worked. One of our less successful ventures was the U.S. release of "Shaolin Soccer." After I watched "Shaolin Soccer" with no subtitles and a woman translating in my ear, we bought worldwide rights excluding Hong Kong and shortly thereafter released the film all over Asia and then in most of Europe. We released a dubbed version in France and Italy and successfully reached a family audience, doing $3.4 million and $1.5 million, respectively. We spent considerable time and money creating a dubbed version for a domestic release. Once it was completed, we tested it in several markets and discovered that something wasn't working for American family audiences, and so we released the film subtitled to appeal to the Asian film fan core here.
Inspired by the bravery of filmmakers like Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, who make films under sometimes adverse conditions, my commitment to innovation in Asian cinema remains strong. I have always tried to expand the boundaries of film and broaden the audience for non-Hollywood fare, not ghettoize it. This fall, Miramax will release "Infernal Affairs," the first of a celebrated three-part series. My dream is to restore and release one of my favorite Asian films, King Hu's "Touch of Zen." I don't care that it is widely available on DVD. I want to do this because it is a good thing to do to.
Every step in this brave new world of bringing Asian cinema to a wide commercial audience is an experiment. Sometimes there are missteps as with "Shaolin Soccer." Sometimes there are giant steps as with "Hero." Despite the challenges, we were committed to "Hero's" brave filmmakers, Zhang Yimou and producer Bill Kong, who envisioned this huge artistic achievement. We had confidence in our plan and didn't talk publicly about the hurdles we had had to overcome.
Credit should be given to Bob Iger at Disney who got behind the film with the promotional support of ABC and ESPN and most of all to Quentin Tarantino, who more than anyone, deserves credit for opening American audiences to the excitement and artistry of Asian cinema.
Harvey Weinstein is co-chairman of Miramax Films.

the copy of hero i've owned is not an illegally pirated copy! or is the fact that i have a regionless player illegal? i'm confused.

gygax!

if you send me a check for $45 we'll just drop this, ok?

harvey

some of weinstein's rationale for not releasing certain films is close to "we had to destroy the village in order to save it" rhetoric.

And I did. Man oh man. More later. I wouldn't change a single frame.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299977/board/nest/11441994

-- fortunate hazel (fhaze...), September 3rd, 2004.

This is like the entire conversation we were having before and after the movie! WTF. Seriously I want to take this movie and redo it with a dance music soundtrack and change all the subtitles so that Jet Li is John Wilkes Boothe and The Emperor is Abraham Lincoln. At least maybe that would get all these boring people muttering about PRC propaganda to shut up. The South Koreans are hundreds of times more overtly nationalistic in their movies, nobody talks half as much shit about them.

maybe we would if we were discussing a south korean movie in this thread, not a chinese one!

The plotting got a little strange in places - "I'll never let you kill the emperor" "OK, so I'll kill you" "Just kidding, I'll wound you, hope you don't die" "OK, all three of us are still alive. I'ma let you go decide whether or not to kill the emperor now, please take my sword." But the actual character interaction between Jet Li, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung was excellent.

Am I strange for finding the Zhang Ziyi-fucking scene a little creepy? She looked so young there.

...or false, who gives a shit?

The character of the emperor bothered me. The whole scene where he's like, "Yes! Finally someone understands my great plan to bring peace and justice through wholesale slaughter!" I gather it was supposed to be inspiring, but I thought it was creepy. And if I can bitch about American nationalism, which I can and do, then surely I can bitch about Chinese nationalism. There was something a little unnerving about the casting, all these Hong Kong stars pressed into the service of the state. I mean, on one hand it's interesting to get a little exposure (however watered down or jazzed up) to another culture's national creation mythology; on the other, this is a call to peace-through-war from the biggest authoritarian state in the world. Didn't exactly give me the warm fuzzies.

Interesting, but emotionally hollow and kind of unnerving.

Totally agree with those who mentioned the wondrous sound, as opposed to the soundtrack. Talking of music, I remember coming away from Crouching Tiger loving the film, but hating the music desperately. While I didn't hate the music in Hero quite is badly, I did find it symptomatic of a kind of New Age vacuousness in parts of the film.

Zhang Ziyi is magnificent to look at, but her part - as others have mentioned - was a bit lame.

On the plus side - the autumn leaves scene; the running acros the water scene; the dodging the arrows scene.

http://www.lff.org.uk/films_details.php?FilmID=570

But I am baffled, like many on this thread, about where its moral center is, or what its political message might mean to modern Chinese people (much less to me). At the end of it, my mouth was agape for more than one reason. a) it was unspeakably gorgeous. b) it made little sense.

It was indeed pretty.

http://image.pathfinder.com/time/asia/features/asian_education/images/tiananmen.jpg

I was surprised to see Richard Belzer as the king's wisecracking sidekick.

i dont mean to start up this debate again, but i think the movie feels that rampant nationalism is in the interest of peace--THAT'S why it is complicated.

I don't see how it is at all complicated, it reads as not very concealed allegory for the Chinese government. We might (threaten to) run you over with a tank on occasion, but it's all for your own good in the end.

I thought Zhang explained that better in an interview somewhere, but I can't remember where I saw the interview.

but the movie also makes it clear that the leader in question is a widely hated tyrant. That's a big difference.

This statement and this discussion remind me again of why I'm voting for Kerry. It's not the economy or abortion or any of that stuff, even though I do think those issues are important. It's mostly because W is limiting our rights and trying to change the way our government works. In my ideology, nothing could be more wrong-headed. Representative democracy *works*. Or anyway, it does as long as we're guaranteed our rights and as long as the media is responsible and as long as lobbyists and interest groups don't become a shadow government.

*gets depressed*

The crux of the movie centers around the twin ideas of "the end justifies the means" and "a noble goal is more important than adhering to noble principles".

But you're ignoring the fact that these ends are justified by the means of killing lots and lots of people, something the movie is happy to accept, and I am not. Go ahead, call me a liberal.

what's most objectionable to me is that it's clearly propaganda for the chinese government, something that only arises out of context from which it was made.

Again, an extra-nationalist POV would have been impossible in the time that the movie takes place in. It's *now* that makes the difference. Why even make this movie unless you like Communism?

And even more interestingly, why was this the biggest hit movie in China of all time? Is it because it has great fiught scenes and colors, or it it becuase they like the moral of the story?

("moral")

But still not valid in the context in which the movie was made. I haven't seen any compelling arguments for the fact that less people would suffer in China if it was not an oppressive Communist country.

How is that not encapsulated in the statements "the end justifies the means" and "a noble goal is more important than adhering to noble principles"?

There's also a good bit of "the devil you know" thrown in there, too.

My favorite thing about the movie besides the GORGEOUS GORGEOUS COLORS was the development of the assassins over the course of the film. Maggie Cheung = DA SUPREMENESS.

well so many chinese movies--from the silent era to the present--take as their theme the uniting of china, the end of the warlords and colonial exploitation, etc. so this is pretty well-trodden territory for chinese films, and probably just close enough to banality to escape much condemnation. but in addition to some populist-symbolic "uniting of the chinese people" there's an appeal to autocracy, which is troubling. anyway i feel this film was problematic mostly cause it was boring.