Hero (Blu-ray)

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Director Zhang Yimou's first martial arts film generated more buzz than a sawmill. Some critics compared the soaring swordplay to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon|," while others likened the multiple narrative framework to "Rashomon." Either way, that's impressive company to be in. But while advertising proclaims "Hero" to be a "visually stunning martial arts epic," let's be clear about what an epic is, and what this film accomplishes.

If you watch "Hero" thinking you're going to see a sweeping epic in the style of "Lawrence of Arabia" or an action film in the mode of "Twin Dragons," you may be disappointed. Yes, there's plenty of acrobatic fighting, but the narrative is minimal and Yimou's action sequences are more like dance than they are slam-bang battles. "Hero" technically qualifies as an epic poem because of its elevated style and its focus on a hero involved in an incident important to the history of a nation. It's the story of an assassin who goes up against the king who would become China's first emperor, the man responsible for the Great Wall. Yet, "Hero" is far more lyrical than it is epic.

For one thing, the narrative is told almost entirely in flashbacks that have a dreamlike quality. Leaves swirl magically through the air, water droplets bounce like tennis balls between swords, warriors skim across the surface of a still lake, and monochromatic color schemes heighten each poetic sequence. "Hero" takes place during a time when China was composed of seven warring kingdoms. The king of Qin is trying to conquer all the states, and the film begins with a man known only as Nameless (Jet Li) traveling to the King in order to present him with the lance head and swords from three feared assassins he's said to have killed: Sky (Donnie Yen|), Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung), and her lover-partner, Broken Sword (Tony Leung). The King (Chen Dao Ming) grants a rare audience, and as he inspects the weapons and listens to the story of how a single warrior came to defeat three legendary martial arts experts, he doubts the story and offers his own version, with the assassin Broken Sword narrating a final version of what may have happened through Nameless.

The elaborate Wu Xia swordplay in these dreamlike flashbacks plays out like a series of nine dramatic dances highlighted by different colors and showcasing fights between different characters. In one such scene, an old man plays an ancient lute while Nameless battles Sky in a courtyard where men had been playing chess and the rain had been falling. Part of the scene is filmed in black and white to signify the battle each man envisions before actually fighting. Other martial arts/dance couplings include Nameless and Snow taking on the King's archers, Snow matching swords with her lover's lover, Moon (Zhang Ziyi, from "Crouching Tiger"), and Nameless fighting Broken Sword on a remote Szechuan lake. All of the scenes are as memorable as they are beautiful to watch.

Swordfighting is like music, we're told, and also like calligraphy. That's really what "Hero" is all about: the parallels between art and violence that are visually affirmed with color and incredible, indelible images. "Hero" is a rich and complex film with a haunting soundtrack of silence and music (featuring the Kodo Drummers of Japan and violin solos by Itzhak Perlman) that's easily more dominant than dialogue. But epic? Not much happens--just three versions of the same story--and we don't really learn much about the characters. Still, "Hero" will be remembered for its haunting and beautiful images of violence--like a volley of arrows that fills the sky and penetrates a calligraphy school, shot from the point of view of the arrows and wounding those who study alongside two of the assassins. It's true poetry in motion, and for what it attempts, "Hero" is exceptional.
So are the martial artists. Li, Leung, Cheung, Yen, and Zhang do as fine a job with their facial expressions and gestures as they do with their acrobatic and precise fight choreographies. Without that high level of performance, and without Christopher Doyle's gorgeous cinematography and Yimou Zhang's vision, the screenplay wouldn't have resonated at all. But when you put everything together, it's an exquisite, lyrical film with strong visuals.