re:mote voices

Title: House Of Flying Daggers
Cast:Ziyi Zhang, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau
Director: Yimou Zhang

While Hero was made several years ago, it took some years for it to get a world wide release, in the meantime director Yimou Zhang was working on his follow up House Of Flying Daggers. Which thanks to Hero’s success is in the cinemas mere months after Hero. Like Hero the film revolves around a cusp point in Chinese history. The current leader of the region involved is getting old, incompetent and unpopular the House Of The Flying Daggers has risen against his rule. A secret organisation they defy the local magistrates, stealing from the rich and helping the poor.

Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro are both deputies of the local authorities, and have been involved with fighting the House of Flying Daggers. But with the death of the old leader, they are having problems identifying the new leader. With rumours that a girl in the new entertainment house might having Flying Daggers connections they hatch a plan to find out what they know. So Ziyi Zhang is arrested by Lau and broken free by Kaneshiro and the game is begun.

The House Of Flying Daggers will obviously appeal to fans of both Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero. With Flying Daggers perhaps following on the trail of Crouching Tiger plot wise, as it has more of the sprawling epic feel. Something which I felt was perhaps missing to some degree from Hero. Hero can perhaps be considered as a series of set pieces, remixed and re-imagined in the way you might get the same track through several people’s ears on a 12” record. By comparison Flying Daggers is the whole album, going through the whole journey, and covering more ground. With that it perhaps has less intensity than Hero – Hero having cranked up the concepts through a strong use of colour and over the top action. While Flying Daggers is action packed, it is more down to earth, and keeps the colour in check with that. Though in saying that, pieces like the fight in the bamboo field pushes the action to an extreme, caught up an intense green. The big colour moment is in the big showdown at the end, and while it could be considered to get silly at that point, it is where it assures the viewer of that fairy tale edge.

Cast wise we see Ziyi Zhang in another similar role, while she has down other work, it is her roles in Crouching Tiger, Hero, and now Flying Daggers which maintain her on a world stage. In each of those films she has been coupled with veterans – in Crouching Tiger there was Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh, Hero has Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, and Tony Leung, while Flying Daggers stars Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro. Lau, Leung Cheung, and Kaneshiro have all appeared in various films by the well known Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai in the past, and are joined with Zhang in his soon to be released 2046. Lau and Leung are two of Hong Kong’s most prolific actors, with one in Hero and the other in Flying Daggers, they have also appeared in a number of films together – like Island Of Greed or the first of the Infernal Affairs films.

Director Yimou Zhang has found himself in and out of favour with the Chinese authorities over the years. His past films have had various levels of success, though undoubtedly Hero and House Of Flying Daggers have raised his profile to a whole new level. Which hasn’t come without criticism, some long-term fans of Oriental cinema claiming that he has sold out, making big action films for dumb Westerners. For me that is a naïve, and perhaps even elitist opinion to promote. While Hero and Flying Daggers may not be the deepest films to ever come out of the cinematic form, they are both examples of Yimou Zhang’s consummate skill and ability. Both films make use of striking, breath-taking visuals, through the combination of scenery, costumes and colour. While the soundtracks are also brilliant, mixing a certain traditional influence to epic effect, to produce affecting and complimentary pieces of music; but there is more to the sound that just the sound track, the films are enhanced and emphasised with the use of sound effects, drawing attention to particular events. Sure these are action films, and there are plenty of fight scenes, but even with Hero, which has that as more of it’s focus than Flying Daggers, there is an emotive content which is as important as any high flying martial arts.

A film like The House Of Flying Daggers is the kind of film that the cinema was made for and will no doubt be well worth seeing and savouring several times.