Film
House of Flying Daggers
- Director
- Zhang Yimou
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 119 mins
Balletic. That’s the description hacks normally resort to when struggling for words to describe gravity-defying martial arts action set-pieces. Hero director Zhang Yimou makes it easier for us here by serving up a dance sequence. But wait, fleeing chop-socky chumps: this ain’t no rubbish song’n’dance routine like the one Takeshi Kitano bizarrely chose to end his Zatoichi. In common with that film’s protagonist, Mei is blind. But she’s also a dancer, affording Ziyi Zhang a brilliant showcase for her formal ballet training in the stunning and colourful Echo Dance routine. This is among the most jaw-dropping sequences Zhang Yimou has ever staged, and it isn’t until the film’s later bamboo forest battle that he delivers anything to match it.
Whereas Hero was a sweeping, stirring Rashomon-esque epic, albeit one with a curious pro-totalitarian stance, House of Flying Daggers is billed as being more intimate in tone. What this means in practice is that it boils down to a bog-standard, twisty-turny love triangle yarn, while retaining the historical setting. It’s 859AD and China’s Tang Dynasty is on its last legs as rebel groups whittle away at its power. Two local police captains are charged with tracking down the new leader of the most effective of these groups, the mysterious House of Flying Daggers, after his predecessor was killed. Their only lead is Mei, who’s suspected of being the dead man’s daughter and of plotting revenge. Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) pretends to be a lone warrior rather embarrassingly named Wind, who flirts with her, whereupon they’re both arrested by his colleague Leo (Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau). But Mei refuses to talk, so they hatch a plan whereby ‘Wind’ will spring her from jail and lead them to the Flying Daggers’ lair. It’s not long before daggers – and arrows and bamboo poles – are indeed flying.
This is very much Ziyi Zhang’s film, and she certainly commands the screen with her pale beauty and extraordinary physical skill, as many a melodramatic twist and reversal is thrown into the increasingly ripe mix. Few basic laws of physics go unflouted in the breathtaking action sequences, which lead to a snowbound showdown that’s as ravishingly beautiful as it is emotionally powerful.
It’s back on screen to conclude the ‘shed’s October Sunday brunch Films About Looking season, programmed by Mark Cousins.
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