Films from & about the East

The Assassin is a film of detailed stillness where everything - words, costumes, natural scenery - is worked out to an essential perfection. Nothing is rushed. A typical scene might consist of two people sitting together, exchanging a few words, whilst elegant tall, white candles smoke in the background.

Set in 8th Century rural China, ‘The Assassin’ is part of the Wuxia tradition of Chinese martial arts literature and films (think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, House of Flying Daggers etc) where themes of honour, fantasy, magic, and discipline are explored. The more popular of these tend to be centered on fighting. This film is more about mindsets and social attitudes.

Taiwanese director Hsiao-Hsien Hou, has the eye of a painter. Colour and light are used sensitively and brilliantly to create subtle tension, moods, and atmosphere. After the first 5 minutes, which are shot in black & white, you see a blood-red sunset over a fogged lake and then the title of the film (its Chinese character) is superimposed over the image in an even bloodier red hue. The effect is startling. It delivers a promise of more beauty and dark emotion which the rest of the picture fulfills.

The score is equally satisfying because it never overreaches. The music is minimal and hugely atmospheric, never becoming an intrusion or merely used to fill up space. Deep, very slow drums in the background, and elegant Chinese zither-work, and other instruments, keep a feel of both the traditional and the modern in the mind of the viewer, and certainly add to the evolving plot. There are also countless scenes where we hear natural sounds of the earth. Birds, a fire crackling, horses moving through a forest... often modern films try too hard to ‘manage’ the sounds of nature, here they aren’t edited at all. I felt there was an element of nostalgia here: the ancient way of life was more connected in this way, more - literally(!) - in tune with the natural world.

Watching this film prompted me to think about the difference between ‘rooms’ and ‘spaces’. Here, it seemed, every interior and outside scene had a special character of its own; it wasn’t just an adjunct of the people inhabiting the spaces. In other words, this director is acutely aware of space as an important conveyor of feeling/tone/emotion. He creates 'spaces' rather than rooms.

The Chinese houses depicted are ‘open’ and wooden, with large boarded floors of thick woods, and are sparely (though opulently) furnished. Natural light is used to the greatest effect to pick out interesting details of luxuriant textures and textiles.

These inner spaces are contrasted with natural landscapes. Birch woods, lush green forests, a secret monastery at the edge of a rocky hillside, misting craters. What is different about these views is that there isn’t the usual ‘panning’ effect by the camera (that sweeping motion so often used in movies). Instead, we approach the space as if we were a character in the story ourselves.

It is partly this lack of special effects that makes this picture stand out. It is also for this reason that, although it has recieved critical claim, it has not garnered popular attention. As one New York Times reviewer mentioned, ‘it was ignored by the Academy’. Hollywood has little to say when it comes to thought-provoking foreign films.

Indeed, if you take the time to read some of the IMDB reviews of this, there are some very aggressively negative comments; people often felt they had to walk out because it was too ‘boring’ or ‘pretentious’.

I would say that sometimes art requires work and focus on the part of the viewer; we've become too used to TV Shows and blockbuster movies that do all the thinking for us. In fact, the art that makes the most money, or is 'popular', doesn't always want us to think, it wants us to be either shocked into intellectual numbness or become addicted to its easy emotional hits.

Personally, after watching ‘The Assassin’, I felt not only inwardly cleaner and uplifted, but that I had seen something really special. I do not walk out of the cinema feeling like that very often. Please watch this film. Your patience will be rewarded.

Good and not so good here. I certainly enjoyed it and would absolutely recommend this to anyone with interest in Eastern philosophy, or Ancient China.

What I felt most lacking was a decent examination of Confucius' philosophy. Ironically this felt more like a 'surfaces film' - a big budget Hollywood movie that has all the right visual elements of breathtaking scenes, but doesn't go too far beyond that.

This is one of the oddest films I've ever seen.