Zhang Yimou’s Hero is worth seeing for the precision and pleasure of its sword fights. Christopher Doyle’s colour photography gives the action force, though the distant characters and indulgent view of imperial power limit its hold on us.
Hero is worth an evening for its fighting and its colour, though its account of imperial power needs more resistance than Zhang Yimou gives it. Zhang treats martial combat with the seriousness usually reserved for a state ceremony, and he has the skill to make that seem reasonable. Bodies in flight carry emotion that the dialogue and competing accounts do not always supply. The trouble comes when that same grandeur lends political authority a dignity we are expected to accept.
Christopher Doyle’s cinematography gives the colour-coded passages more to do than tell us which account we are watching. A change of palette can make a confrontation feel angrier or more remote before anyone has to explain the difference. Emi Wada’s costumes help make the figures readable within those broad fields of colour. The eye has something clear to follow even when the story asks us to reconsider what we thought we understood.
We were exhilarated by the flying fights, because the extravagant changes of direction remain so graceful and legible. Zhang makes the impossible movement worth watching in its own right; we do not spend these encounters simply waiting for someone to land a decisive blow. Production designers Tingxiao Huo and Zhenzhou Yi provide settings that suit this formal approach, giving the combat room to be seen. Their theatricality works better during the fighting than during the personal drama.
Jet Li’s Nameless gives the film a steady centre, though his reserve also helps keep us at a distance. Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Maggie Cheung, as Broken Sword and Flying Snow, offer the strongest reason to care about the people between the fights. Chen Daoming’s King of Qin belongs comfortably to the film’s stately manner. We can appreciate the discipline of these performances while still wanting a less ceremonious exchange between people with so much at stake.
The screenplay by Zhang, Wang Bin and Feng Li keeps asking us to reconsider what we have seen, and the colour changes are useful guides through its competing accounts. The editors, Ru Zhai, Angie Lam On-Yee and Vincent Lee, make individual passages flow, but the returns can interrupt our involvement just as it begins. Tan Dun’s music sustains the ceremonial mood effectively. It also contributes to a sense that almost everything must be momentous. At 99 minutes, the film is brief enough, yet some stretches feel more solemn than their dramatic weight can justify.
The political thinking deserves more scrutiny. There is something worth considering in the film’s interest in pacifism, particularly within a genre so dependent on skilled violence. Yet the screenplay moves too readily from the desire to end conflict towards respect for concentrated power, without giving the people subject to it enough weight. We do not need a martial-arts film to draft a constitution, but it should make obedience harder to admire than Zhang does here.
Those who dislike airborne swordplay will find little here to change their minds. For anyone who enjoys the genre, Zhang’s control of movement and colour is ample reason to stay, despite the distant storytelling. There is no obligation to accept the political lesson along with the choreography.
