Legend of the Mountain (Shan zhong zhuan qi)

Director King Hu

The director with Sylvia Chang

Sylvia Chang

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LEGEND OF THE MOUNTAIN (Shan zhong zhuan qi)         B                                               Hong Kong  Taiwan  South Korea  (192 mi)  1979 ‘Scope d:  King Hu

Legend of the Mountain is the love story of a human and a ghost.  It’s a Song Dynasty short story.  It tells about a struggle that occurs in the ghostly realm, in another world.  The ghosts’ main objective is to be reincarnated as a human.  But being a ghost has its convenient aspects – for example, you can work magic!   It’s strange; why do they always want to become human?  Humans are born to suffer.  You could say this raises a question.  The movie was more than three hours long in its original version.  The film critic Derek Elley watched a videotape of the film and decided that it should be shown at both the London and the Edinburgh film festivals.  Later on, when I told him that I might shorten it, they wrote me a long letter saying I mustn’t cut it.  As for the full version of Legend of the Mountain being shown at the London Film Festival, let’s ignore whether the reviews were good or bad; at least they got to see the whole leopard and not just the spots!                                                                                             —King Hu, 1979

Conjured up from the same ghost stories in Pu Songling’s Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio that inspired A Touch of Zen (Xia nü) (1971), specifically one story entitled A Cave Full of Ghosts in the West Mountain, this film was shot back to back with Raining in the Mountain (Kong shan ling yu) (1979), released the same year, taking advantage of the mountainous location shots in South Korea, it also recycles many of the same actors used in the previous film, shot once again by Henry Chan, where the art direction and Scope cinematography is utterly spectacular, yet the eerie nature of the supernatural mysticism in this film is in the realm of Mizoguchi’s ghost story Ugetsu (Ugetsu monogatari) (1953), eventually leading to Tsui Hark’s more fancifully produced trilogy beginning with A CHINESE GHOST STORY (1987).  This film has always suffered in comparison to its companion film, largely because it usually appears in its truncated 105-minute version, yet to immerse yourself in the full-length version is an unforgettable experience that brings to mind Terrence Malick’s enthralling 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #1 The Tree of Life, yet made thirty years earlier with a completely different philosophical structure and design.  Hu brought a literary depth to martial arts films that elevated the genre to an art form, particularly his unique blend of Chinese history and legend, politics and martial arts, philosophy and religion.  Besides his love of Peking opera, which may have inspired those acrobatic wuxia leaps and jumps, Hu’s films also display a heterogeneous array of traditional forms ranging from history and legend to literature and painting.  Hu’s affection for culture is expressed in his character’s familiarity with history, operas, short stories, and novels, yet what stands out in this film is the stunning, painterly design of every shot (Hu’s mother was a painter), including an astonishing array of nature shots, something he shares with American director Terrence Malick, yet Hu’s overriding concern was combining the natural and the supernatural into the same universe, placing this phantasmagoric ghost tale within the immense open-air beauty of the surrounding natural world, with birds and animals frolicking or dragonflies breeding, accentuating the mountains, trees, rivers, lily ponds, and waterfalls along with a golden setting sun, including shots through tree branches or fruit blossoms, as if paying tribute to the natural images of Chinese poetry, yet the reflective blend of myth and history is what makes this a King Hu film.  Two years earlier in 1977, King Hu married a Chinese writer and scholar named Chung Ling, who had written extensively about Chinese literature and had been teaching the subject for several years at the State University of New York in Albany, giving up her academic career to work with her husband, writing the screenplay for this film before resuming her teaching career in Hong Kong in 1982.  Co-written, directed, produced, and co-edited by Hu who also provided the art direction, production and costume design, this film represents the evolution of the wuxia film where action has largely been replaced by contemplative reflection, recalling a time when many religious traditions had co-mingled in China for centuries and shaped Chinese life for more than two thousand years, blending together different elements of Taoism, a system of belief attributed to the philosophy of Lao Tzu, a 6th-century BC contemporary of Confucius that teaches how to accept the natural order of things and live in harmony with the universe, and Buddhism, which believes human life is one of suffering that paves your way into the next life, ruled by the forces of reincarnation and karma, offering a path of meditative practice and spiritual development leading to insight into the true nature of reality, with the goal of attaining nirvana, or spiritual enlightenment.  By bringing all of these elements together, Hu accentuates the transcendental interconnectedness of things, even the things that seem to sidetrack us from seeking our desired goals and destinations.    

Set in the Song dynasty in the 11th century, where a scholar, Ho Qingyun (Shih Chun), embodies the more practical, rationalistic traditions of Confucianism, which is more an ethical philosophy rather than a religion, having failed the imperial exam, becoming an ardent calligraphy expert and copy artist, summoned by a Superior Monk (Chen Hui-Lou) from the Ocean Mudra Temple set in the mist-shrouded Gaya Mountains asking him to copy a Buddhist Mudra Sutra that releases the souls of the dead, to be used for a ceremony honoring deceased soldiers, which presumably will bring nirvana to legions of dead soldiers whose casualties resulted from the ongoing warfare of the Song-Xia wars.  Dispatched to a faraway fort where he’ll presumably have the peace and tranquility needed for his time-consuming task (though what’s more peacefully serene than a remote Buddhist temple in the mountains?), Ho wordlessly sets off on yet another long-distanced journey on foot, with prayer beads given to him by a monk to ward off any demons he might encounter along the way, yet his journey is defined by an overwhelming visual splendor, seeing a mysterious spirit in the woods playing a flute, only to disappear and reappear somewhere else, occasionally asking for directions, before finally arriving at the fort, discovering it is abandoned except for Mr. Tsui (Tung Lin), an advisor to the deceased general Han (Sun Yueh), informing him that the general and most of the soldiers were wiped out in battle.  No sooner does he arrive that he is literally swarmed by a host of characters, including a muted, seemingly deranged Old Chang (Tien Feng), Madame Wang (Rainbow Hsu), an extremely bossy, man-like woman who immediately orders him around, pushing in front of him her beautiful daughter Melody (Hsu Feng).  At a welcoming dinner, Ho is plied with wine while Melody furiously plays the drums, as if casting an intoxicating spell on the man until he passes out, only to awaken the next morning, though it could just as easily have been days, having completely forgotten everything that happened the night before, yet Melody has apparently spent the night, claiming he had his way with her, whispering sweet nothings in her ear while promising to take care of her.  Basically tricked into marrying her, this whirlwind of change ushers in a thoroughly altered mood, where something strangely mysterious is going on even before Ho has transcribed a single word, as a golden-dressed Lama (Wu Ming-Tsai, aka Ng Ming-choi, who also provided the martial arts choreography) and a Taoist priest Yang (Chen Hui-lou) are seen lurking in the background, moving back and forth outside in the distance while sneaking in and out of the fort interior looking for the prayer beads, exhibiting much of the same secret behavior from the previous film with vying parties searching for a priceless ancient scroll, where it’s even the same actors reprising their roles in a different capacity.  What’s clear to viewers is what’s being hidden from Ho, as behind the scenes they are casting various spells on one another, creating spiritual battles through musical instruments, with Melody’s power expressed through her drumming while the Lama counters with a tambourine drum, while also using clashing cymbals, with the Taoist priest also referred to as Reverend and Master.  This magical interplay between the dark arts is a fierce and furious sport, yet it soon becomes apparent that they all want to get their hands on the sutra once it’s finally finished, each having their own secret motives while placing pressure on Ho into hastily completing his copying.  Whatever peace and serenity Ho might have been seeking, he certainly doesn’t find it here, as he’s surrounded by apparitions vying for absolute control of the mystical world.     

Mr. Tsui takes Ho into town to buy some needed supplies, but gets sidetracked by a tavern run by Madame Chuang (Jeon Sook) and her lovely daughter Cloud (Taiwanese film legend Sylvia Chang), with the Taoist priest Yang living nearby, initially causing some consternation, but Ho and Cloud go walking together in search of needed herbs, becoming a heavily romanticized journey through the splendor of nature, with Ho realizing she is the spirit he saw playing the flute earlier, capable of appearing and disappearing, with the two immediately sensing some connection.  But it’s Mr. Tsui’s drunken comments that cause alarm, blurting out that Ho’s wife is a demon, that she only wants to get her hands on the sutra before enslaving him, much like she has done to Old Chang, who was once a proud warrior protecting the fort.  It’s here that Ho realizes he’s surrounded not by people but by spirits, devilishly motivated souls who are hell-bent on being helped into the next stage of their existence.  Music is a much more important aspect of this film, written by Wu Ta-chiang, featuring a prominent use of the flute, where there’s even a recurring love theme, as it’s apparent Ho and Cloud have a love connection, yet since she’s not human, only in spirit can they actually flourish.  When he returns home, Melody flies off into a jealous rage, using her demonic powers to immobilize his legs, leaving him unable to move until Cloud rescues him, with Melody going toe-to-toe with the Lama and the Taoist priest who served as her Master, both fighting back, yet ultimately Ho has to face the woman he married in a no holds barred battle for survival pitting the living against the dead.  More than the other Hu films where he appears, the actor Shih Chun is challenged by lengthy, wordless sequences, where he has to do more with his face to convey the layers of bewilderment and confusion that he continually experiences.  The length of the film allows for plenty of detours in the narrative thread, which is slim at best, feeling overlong and repetitive, where the interactions between characters often grow tedious, with characters that are not as richly developed as earlier films (but that may be because they’re not among the living, guided purely by instinctual desires), but it does allow the director to experiment with duration, elongating the dreamlike fantasies with their ability to both stretch and compress time, resorting to flashback sequences that help explain what happened, as Melody was an apparent favorite of General Han during his time at the fort, yet grew enamored at hearing Cloud play the flute, sparking the jealous rage of Melody, who becomes a serial murderer, killing not just Cloud but her own mother and assistant as well, tried for her crimes at the General’s court, then ordered into exile to die alone.  Yet her wandering spirit remains restless, seeking to settle her scores, inadvertently granted extreme powers from a misguided Taoist priest, enslaving the souls of Madame Wang and her assistant in her attempt to steal the sutra, with hopes of resurrecting herself back into the world of humans.  Hu brilliantly uses the priest’s prayer shrine, which has a black screen, like a movie screen, allowing his subject as well as viewers to simultaneously watch events unfold from her past life, generating startling revelations, featuring a multitude of shifting allegiances, murky motivations, betrayals, and romances, all inter-connected, evolving into a unique cinematic aesthetic where hypnotic imagery is met with hallucinations and the sublime.  As a distinctly Chinese ghost story, it’s not very surprising, exhibiting little suspense or dramatic tension (the complete opposite of his earlier wuxia classics), as the protagonist Ho is not quick to figure things out, yet the glorious otherworldly fantasia on display is visually extravagant, with fighting encounters in the forest, where religious and demonic forces battle it out with each other, with Cloud and Melody acrobatically leaping high up into tree branches before descending on each other, like dive bombs from above.  Equal parts fairy tale and nightmare, utterly strange and compelling, it’s the gentle sounds of Cloud’s flute that personalizes much of the musical soundtrack, like a musical leitmotif, where her pervasive spirit overrides much of what we see, receding deep into the internal recesses of our imaginations. 

Raining in the Mountain (Kong shan ling yu)

 

Director King Hu

The director with actor Sun Yueh

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RAINING IN THE MOUNTAIN (Kong shan ling yu)                    B-                                    Hong Kong  China  (120 mi)  1979  ‘Scope  d:  King Hu

In this film Hu asserts himself as the screenwriter, director, producer, art director, and editor, thus ensuring a high degree of authorial control over the total visual design of the film while imparting a calculated display of cultural and historical scholarship.  In many ways Hu’s own preoccupation with Chinese culture partly arose out of a confrontation with the growing popularity of Japan’s cultural assertiveness, with the rise in popularity of artists such as Kurosawa or Mizoguchi, which largely increased once the postwar American occupation of Japan eased in determining the dictates of film content and subject matter, allowing artists a fuller range of expression.  Hu nearly leaves the wuxia genre behind altogether in this more austere film, shot concurrently in Korea with the similarly-titled but quite different LEGEND OF THE MOUNTAIN, both released in 1979, as there’s barely any action at all, appearing only at the end.  Instead Hu seems fascinated with the location, remarkably photographed in Scope by Henry Chan, choosing a sprawling 8th century Bulguksa Buddhist temple set in the mountains.  Set during the Ming Dynasty, the magisterial opening is a long, drawn-out pilgrimage to a faraway place, involving extensive walking through a great distance, from the flatlands to the trees, featuring picturesque shots through craggy tree branches, or sunlight wafting through the trees, or foggy mists hovering over the hills, leading up into the mountains in a precarious climb, but as they approach the monastery, the remote Three Treasures Temple, they are greeted by one of the monks who escorts them into the grounds, passing what seems like an endless variety of buildings and climbing up a gazillion stairs, where the spaciousness of the place is epic and grandiose, only to have to walk even farther before finally reaching their accommodations, a spare yet unassuming room on the grounds, revealing the identities of a wealthy aristocrat merchant known as Esquire Wen (Sun Yueh) and his concubine White Fox (Hsu Feng), accompanied by her sidekick Gold Lock (Wu Ming-Tsai) disguised as a servant.  Yet she and Gold Lock immediately scamper around the maze-like grounds in search of a mysterious ancient scroll, as the two sneak, hide, and leap over walls, running and leaping about to evade detection, past hidden alleys and sloping roofs, where you’d think they’d be physically exhausted just arriving to such a remote destination on foot, yet the pair is a bundle of untapped energy.  The surprise here is that this turns out to be a heist film, with people scurrying around all the time spying on others, getting into other people’s business and trying to get the upper hand, yet it takes place at a Buddhist monastery where ethics are supposedly beyond reproach, yet everyone’s seemingly plotting nefarious activities.  High end production values with a low end story, this could be a plot for a Marx Brothers movie, as it’s a lot of talk seemingly about nothing, with misdirection everywhere.  To celebrate one hundred years of Chinese cinema, the Hong Kong Film Awards released a list of The Best 100 Chinese Motion Pictures, with this listed at #59, Hong Kong Film Awards' List of The Best 100 Chinese Motion.

Also arriving to the temple is General Wang (Tien Feng), the governor of the district, and his police chief associate, Lieutenant Chang Cheng (Chen Hui-Lou), who immediately recognizes White Fox as a notorious master thief, so he follows her, attempting to disrupt and thwart her plans.  Both of the distinguished men are outsiders that have been sent for by the aging Abbot (Chin Chang-ken) as advisors and asked to help mediate his choice for a successor.  Both Wen and the General have their own designs on who should be chosen, having carefully established back channel contacts within the monastery through the years, both hoping to get their hands on the sacred Mahayana Sutra scroll of Tripitaka, a priceless relic with undreamed of value.  White Fox was brought here specifically to steal the document, as was Lieutenant Chang Cheng, and both counter each other’s stealthy moves for the duration of the movie, spying, plotting, and outmaneuvering the other, becoming repetitious and somewhat ridiculous after a while, bordering on a farce, turning into a comedy of errors routine.  In this film, characters run around a lot, athletically and acrobatically getting into forbidden locations, keeping out of sight, with Hu constructing a series of long, habitual rhythms that continuously reoccur, like a cycle of life montage.  Yet making matters worse is the arrival of Master Wu Wai (Wu Chia-hsiang), a layman with an expert knowledge of Buddhism, who is followed by an entourage of beautiful young women, outrageously conducting an outdoor prayer session while the women bathe in the nearby waters, an obvious distraction even to some of the monks.  While ostensibly grounded in Buddhist tradition, following meditative contemplation rituals from centuries old practices, this offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how prominently greed and corruption have infiltrated the holy grounds, offering a scathing portrait of devious monks resorting to the same nefarious activities that take place on the outside, sneaking off to buy things from local merchants that feed their own personal desires, ambitiously vying for power through unscrupulous practices, underlying the reputation of the monastery, exacerbated further by constant complaints from the disgruntled monks.  In terms of the Abbot’s succession, one of the higher ranking monks Hui Wen (Lu Chan) has agreed to give Wen the prized manuscript if he is selected, while General Wang has a similar agreement with Hui Tung (Shih Chun), though the disciple spending the most time at the Abbot’s side is the implacable figure of Hui Ssu (Paul Chun Pui).  Adding to the mix is a released convict, Chiu Ming (Lin Tung), who has paid a special fine to enter the monastery to seek a peaceful life, falsely accused of a crime by the corrupt General, yet vowing no retaliatory animosity.  When the Abbot assigns him to guard the library housing the ancient scrolls, he intercepts the apparent masterminds who are there to make off with the ancient manuscript, then accused by the thieves themselves of being a thief.  

The Abbot holds a public outdoor hearing with all the monks assembled, as well as the distinguished outsiders, to consider the fate of Chiu Ming.  Lieutenant Chang Cheng makes the case that he caught the man red-handed being somewhere he had no authorization to be (unaware of the Abbot’s instructions), apprehending the man at the scene of the crime, leaving out why he happened to be there, while General Wang argued that he previously arrested and convicted this scoundrel, claiming he could only be up to no good, with Master Wu Wai interrogating each of them with direct questions that call into question their own motives.  Yet when discipled monks are asked for their input, they indicate the General would not be satisfied unless significant punishment was rendered.  Accordingly, the Abbot has him locked and chained to the library door, which, of course, means none of the thieves have access to the manuscript.  The General relents, claiming the punishment is too harsh, pleading for the convict’s release, which then opens the door for more maneuvering behind the scenes, with each player caught in a web of betrayal.  The spatial Buddhist architecture, in its primal stillness, stands in stark contrast to the restless and elusive flurry of physical activity among the competing crooks, with most of the film set outside amid majestic forests and open-air temples, with Hu’s interest in Buddhism on display with its crucial relationship to the laws of the natural world.  After spending the next morning walking with various high ranking monks, the Abbot is ready to render his decision, surprising all with his pick of an outsider, none other than Chiu Ming, whose calm humility in the face of the storm is a quality the others lack, which disappoints everyone, all concealing their motives and identities yet vying to overturn this decision.  The benevolence of the newly chosen Abbot is immediately on display, thwarting all power plays, while demonstrating compassion, yet the undaunted Esquire Wen has the stolen scroll in his possession, urging White Fox to make her escape, eyed by Lieutenant Chang Cheng, who follows her as she escapes into the woods, with first one and then the other continually stealing it from the other in a comic Keystone cops routine of misdirection.  With characters running in opposite directions with their prize until smacking into an immovable obstacle, shocking cuts occur when characters unexpectedly appear behind trees in the forest chase, leading to a long escapade that finally features some daring martial arts battles and some nifty stuntwork.  It’s ultimately Esquire Wen and White Fox that win the prize, followed by a contingency of monks on their tail, with Wen having no other option but to hire a ferry boat across the river, very pleased with himself, until the boatman’s identity is revealed and Wen is exposed as a scam artist, bringing to light his own ruthless ambition and indiscriminate corruption.  Traversing through the mountainous rocks and boulders, the monks block all exit avenues, yet it’s Master Wu Wai’s stable of women that surprise them in the forest, turning into flying shamans with their robes fluttering in the breeze, finally cornering them and dealing a final blow of karmic retribution.  The new Abbot sends them all aghast when he burns the sacred document, dismissed as a “tattered old scroll,” claiming it was the cause of too much unwanted attention, handing out new copies that he carefully transcribed himself, claiming the scroll’s power lies in its written message, not in the object itself.  Ostensibly a morality tale, where the rain in the title refers to outside worldly influence wreaking havoc in hallowed quarters, it does feature a long and extensive battle of wits, where the frenetic underhanded subterfuge is matched by a calmer, more virtuous display of selflessness, the moral of the story apparently is crime doesn’t pay, with underlying implications that moral justice matters.