In 2002, Zhang Yimou’s film Hero reached American audiences. It presented striking imagery, entertaining fight scenes, and a satisfyingly easy-to-understand conclusion. However, the film’s visual flourishes were so aesthetically pleasing that few questioned their substance. In this review I hope to assess these visuals beyond aesthetic appeal and compare Hero to one of Zhang Yimou’s earlier films, Raise the Red Lantern.
Hero begins with a nameless warrior, played by Jet Li, who brings a bounty to the monarch of the Qin Kingdom in 4th century B.C. China. He earns an audience with the king by defeating three of the ruler’s enemies—Long Sky, Flying Snow, and Broken Sword. With each story of victory, the warrior is allowed closer to the king, until he is ten paces away, just close enough to kill him—if he wants to.
The most recognizable aspect of Hero is its visual imagery. The first major fight is filmed in black and white; characters float or fly when battle calls for it; warriors spar over beautiful lakes and among forests with swirling leaves. Likewise, Yimou uses slow motion photography to emphasize drama, which might have had an impact if Yimou had not used it in every scene.
At times these visual flourishes aptly assist the narrative. Characters’ costumes and environments are colored to reflect their personalities. Yimou’s use of color is symbolic and visually satisfying, albeit overt. While the imagery is heavy-handed, it is what attracts many people to the film and makes it a memorable viewing experience.
However, there are several smaller artistic choices in Hero that are not effective. Yimou’s attempts to integrate imagery of water continually fail, primarily because of distractingly bad visual effects and awkward photography. Also, while the music of the film is quite good, it sounds too much like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon—Tan Dun composed for both films. Finally, there is a scene with particularly poor effects in which Flying Snow and the warrior protect Broken Sword from volleys of arrows. In a film that emphasizes aesthetics so much, these shortcomings are all the more disappointing.
It’s also useful to compare Hero’s visual elements with Zhang Yimou’s 1991 film, Raise the Red Lantern. In that story, a young college student becomes the fourth wife of a rich man and a victim of the household’s strict, chauvinist traditions. Most of the film features red light to symbolize sex and ironically represent romance. The palate shifts to colder blues and whites as the story becomes increasingly tragic.
Raise the Red Lantern also shows Yimou’s sensitivity toward composition. In that film Yimou’s camera remains static and rigid like the social structure that traps the characters until the film’s climax, when Yimou changes to handheld cinematography at just the right moment. By contrast, in Hero, Yimou abandons his static camera for sweeping cinematography that seems to move with the wind, but which is used far too frequently to be effective.
Yimou’s films are unquestionably beautiful, but their symbolism and meaning have disappeared. In interviews Yimou says that his goal is to give audiences visually poetic moments they will remember forever. Perhaps he succeeds in this endeavor. But personally, the catharsis I feel at the ending of Raise the Red Lantern is more memorable and more satisfying than the many times that I admire the pretty colors of Hero.
Likewise, comparing Hero to Yimou’s other films raises obvious questions about how his politics have changed. Raise the Red Lantern is widely regarded as an eloquent criticism of China’s Communist government dictating the behavior of its citizens according to traditionalist ideologies. Indeed, Zhang Yimou’s father was a major under Chiang Kai-Shek, and his brother fled to Taiwan with the nationalists in 1949. Yimou himself worked for eight years on farms and in a cotton mill as a result of the Cultural Revolution. The Chinese government initially banned the release of Raise the Red Lantern because of its political criticisms, and critics around the world praised Yimou for his film’s relevance to contemporary events.
However, Hero is an undeniably patriotic and nationalist film. At the film’s end, the Qin Emperor gives an emotive speech justifying his brutal conquests as a campaign to unite China. Broken Sword explains that the warrior should not kill the king by writing two words, “Our Land.” And the film’s final shot falls on the Great Wall of China, a symbol of China’s historical achievements and proud history, as well as its desire to be sovereign from the rest of the world. With these symbols, Yimou defends the Chinese government of today, which actually assisted with the film's production. And in 2008, the Chinese government hired Yimou to direct China’s opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympics, certainly a sea change from when his films wouldn’t be released.
Yimou’s ideological shift from Raise the Red Lantern to Hero is profound. It is possible that as China has progressed and grown over the last decade, he has had a genuine change of heart regarding his government. However, Yimou claims that he has no interest in politics and his films are not meant to have any political commentary. If he is truly apathetic, then his political statements in earlier films appear to have been as superficial as his showy uses of color today. If his seeming ideological shift is the result of weak artistic integrity or intellectual dishonesty, film critics have been victimized by a practical joke.
People interested in Yimou’s political leanings will probably have to watch his future films to complete this analysis. But frankly, after House of Flying Daggers and Curse of the Golden Flower, his movies are hardly good enough to justify the interest.
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