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. 

2015 Top Ten List #9 The Assassin (Nie Yinniang)

THE ASSASSIN (Nie Yinniang)          A-           
Taiwan  China  Hong Kong  France  (107 mi)  2015  d:  Hou Hsiao-hsien     Official site [Japan]

Winner of the Best Director at Cannes, shot on 35 mm by longtime cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bin, this is undoubtedly one of the most ravishingly beautiful films ever seen, thought of during the screening as a cross between Wong Kar-wai’s ASHES OF TIME REDUX (2008, from 1994 version) and Kurosawa in 3D.  From the outset one can’t help but be impressed by the luxuriousness of the images and the multiple layers of form that exist like wavy tree branches swaying in the breeze, with someone seen stirring in the shadows, moving slowly between the various fields of visions, as rocky crevices seemingly protrude off the screen, where movement is expressed by changes of focus within the frame of the same shot, continually altering the depth perception of the viewer, offering an experience like no other.  While this is Hou Hsiao-hsien’s rendering of a Wuxia film, slow and hypnotically mesmerizing, thoughtfully accentuating the historical period detail in a film drenched in a painterly opulence that supersedes any consideration for action sequences, credit must be given to costumes and production designer Huang Wen-ying that so illustriously recreates the meticulous look of the 9th century, including paintings on the set that were drawn by students from the academy of fine arts in Taipei, while also featuring the captivatingly percussive music by Lim Giong, as there isn’t a single frame that doesn’t appear in synch with the director’s artistic vision.  The problem, as there is for most all martial arts films, is there’s simply not much of a story, and what little there is feels overshadowed by the luminous dreamlike quality of the film.  His first costume drama since the hypnotic allure of Flowers of Shanghai (Hai shang hua) (1998), and his first feature in 8 years since THE FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON (2007), this is an almost equally financed Taiwan-China production (also a first for this director) costing ten times more than any of his previous works, adapted from a 9th century short story from the Tang Dynasty scribe Pei Xing, known as chuanqi, freely reimagined by the director who has had this film in mind for the past 25 years, initially written in very precise, classical Chinese language, simplified in the English subtitles for easier comprehension, yet also pared down again by the director who refuses to reveal too much, eliminating all extraneous material, leaving behind only a minimalist, barebones outline of a story.   

Set in a time when the Imperial Court and the Weibo province (the largest and strongest of the many provinces) co-exist in an uneasy alliance when various military factions are still vying for power and control in China, the film is named after the lead character, Nie Yinniang, Shu Qi from THREE TMES (2005), exiled by her family at the age of ten where she was raised by Jiaxin (Sheu Fang-yi), a princess turned Taoist nun, a near mythological creature that trains her to become a lethal assassin charged with the task of targeting a tyranny of governors that avoid the authority of the Emperor in the Imperial Court.  In the opening prologue, filmed in black and white, condensed into a boxed 1:37 aspect ratio, we see Yinniang (which means Hidden Woman) dressed entirely in black, waiting patiently lurking in the shadows before springing into action, literally flying across the screen, striking a lethal blow, slitting the throat of a man on horseback, all happening in the blink of an eye, seemingly faster than the eye can see.  When it becomes apparent what’s happened, the stunned guards react angrily, but all we see are flashes of swords chasing through the foliage of a dense forest that fades into darkness.   Moving on to the house of her next prey, she is once again a near invisible presence, but decides not to strike her intended victim, preferring not to kill him in front of his young son seen innocently chasing after a butterfly.  This sentiment clearly angers her teacher, believing the art of killing is coldblooded efficiency, with all emotions held in check.  As a test of her resolve, Jiaxin sends her on a mission to murder the governor of Weibo, the place where Yinniang was born.  Upon returning to the familiar grounds of her family home after the passage of who knows how many years, a place she no longer has any connection to, the frame expands to widescreen along with bursts of color, as the opening title greets the audience set against the crimson colors of a stunning landscape shot at sunset.  What follows is a stream of confusion, as Hou introduces a flurry of new characters each with differing motives, including a new palace aflutter with rumors and political turmoil in an expanding interior architectural design featuring stunning ornamental decors, blending the lavish elegance and color of the silk robes illuminated by candlelight with the curtains blowing in the breeze.  Once again, the camera pans around the corners of existing layers that exist within the frame of each composition, where Yinniang lurks in hidden places only the audience sees. 

Chang Chen, previously paired with Shu Qi in THREE TIMES (2005), having evolved from the young 14-year old nonprofessional lead in Edward Yang’s masterwork A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (1991), plays the targeted governor Lord Tian Ji’an, the most powerful leader in the Weibo province, who just happens to be Yinniang’s cousin, where once they were young lovers slated to be married, but we learn his mother betrayed her, so she was sent away instead, and a political marriage was arranged between two powerful families in order to help maintain the peace between Weibo and the Imperial Court.  One of the more poignant aspects of the film is revealed when Lord Tian explains the significance of two matching jade pieces that he and Yinniang were given as children.  All of this adds an element of intrigue surrounding her mission, as she’s ordered to kill a man she once loved.  In the flurry of activity inside the palace, Lord Tian has problems of his own, where the supposed peace appears to be crumbling, angrily banishing a young lord for speaking unwisely, sending soldiers after him to bury him alive, leading to a confrontation with Yinniang in a gorgeously realized ambush in the birch trees, while his wife Lady Tian (Zhou Yun) is growing more increasingly hostile towards his favorite concubine, Huji (Hsieh Hsin-ying), who is concealing her pregnancy.  Making matters worse, Lord Tian is regularly approached by a seemingly dark presence that appears out of the shadows, always arriving unexpectedly, none more amusing than when Yinniang reveals herself to the Lord by falling from the roof and coming face-to-face to announce Huji’s pregnancy, then disappearing just as quickly into the night.  One of the more bizarre scenes features Yinniang having to dual a literal mirror image of herself, another female adversary in a gold mask, which suggests she’s from a wealthy house, in contrast to the black outfit worn by Yinniang.  While this scene is never explained and is more of a puzzle than anything else, with some suggesting she’s fighting her own inner demons, the lady in the gold mask is none other than Lady Tian, apparently unhappy with the way Yinniang has returned to meddle in her husband’s affairs, also showing she’s willing to fight any perceived threat to her own family’s position in Weibo, playing a more complex, Lady Macbeth role (even more devious later), which gives Yinniang reason to pause.  Of interest, the lady in the gold mask and Lady Tian were two different characters in the original script, but were merged into one by the final shooting.    

One of the more sinister characters behind the scenes is a bald wizard with huge eyebrows and an overflowing beard, viewed as a martial arts master with magic powers (perhaps the teacher of Lady Tian), who makes paper dolls carrying demonic spells.  In the one supernatural sequence of the film, the doll produces a poisonous fog that seems to disintegrate the unsuspecting Huji, only to be thwarted by the intervention of Yinniang who discovers the murderous plot.  When the soldiers find the old wizard, they shoot him with a volley of arrows.  In Hou’s original conception, however, the old man magically escapes by disappearing in front of the soldiers, leaving the arrows to find only his clothes that remain without a human body.  But Hou never found a way to make this look convincing, so the old man perished.  Certainly one of the most gorgeous scenes is a rhapsodic ceremonial sequence that is literally drenched in the visual extravagance of Oriental fantasies, which is an astonishing physical reconstruction of 9th century Weibo.  Populating the landscape with remarkably dense forests from Inner Mongolia and China’s Hubei province, the martial arts sequences are themselves conceived as short bursts of energy, viewed as a perfect economy of the spirit, practicing humility, while always maintaining harmonious balance according to the teachings of the I Ching.  According to interviews, Hou has indicated viewers may need to see this film as many as three times in order to fully understand the intricacies involved, first to get a rough idea of the artistic presentation, second to understand the story buried so deeply within the rich textures of the film, and third to fully appreciate just how extraordinary this film is.  It does pose a Shakespearean dilemma posed in Hamlet, but in this film, which audaciously features an assassin as the protagonist, it asks the question:  to kill or not to kill?  Spending most of the movie waiting and ponderously observing, the character could serve as an alter ego or stand-in for the filmmaker himself, as Yinniang is torn between the teachings of her Taoist master to carry out her assignment, while also having to contend with her own family, as her father is an advisor to Lord Tian, to whom she may still have an unspoken connection of her own, becoming something of a prolonged battle of wills.  While it’s extremely unusual for a lead character to only have about nine speaking lines, her opaque, gravely toned down performance matches the severity of her mission, which allows the audience to interpret what she’s experiencing while continuously looming behind the scenes.  While she’s curiously indecisive, playing to the strength of her mental resolve to evaluate in its entirety just how things are playing out in the Weibo palace before she acts, only intervening from time to time, as she allows the natural order of things to unfold while assailing the unpredictable fluctuations of history and time.  When all is said and done, she emerges as the master of her own destiny, much like the director who has made yet another film unlike anyone else, redefining the well-traveled genre as an art form that can literally transport an audience back into another mystical time and place in breathtaking fashion.