Nothing cheap but everything deeply Biddhist and spiritual

Rating: 10/10 (19 July 2013)

This is a magical film and the magic of it is so purely Chinese and so purely Mental that we do not even have any problem entering it and believing it. It is the story of a very special sword from very ancient China, a sword that carries fate and destiny in it for the person who controls it, because it is not enough to own it, you must control it and when you control it, it controls you. That sword is stolen and tamed by a young woman who is to marry some nobleman though long before she was both abducted and saved by a wild young man roaming in the mountains and distant deserts, far from everything. They fell in love after much fighting.
When her marriage arrives, the young man comes to Beijing to claim the young woman but that is impossible because her father is the governor. So he manages to escape and she decides to steal the sword and to go after him. The story becomes complicated then and yet very simple. She is in love with a middle-age woman she calls her sister and who was the owner of the sword. Hence a rivalry for who will control it develops. That middle-age woman was in love with a man her age who was in love with her but both could not go through their love for various honorable reasons, for various pledges they had taken to their masters, the woman her fighting master, the man his Buddhist spiritual master.
These two go after the escaping girl and finally find her in the hands of a witch who has drugged her. They bring her back to consciousness but the witch comes back from some errand and the fight will poison the man and the witch with the witch's poisoned darts. Then the younger woman learns from the middle-age woman where the young man she loves is and she goes there to meet him, to share her love with him one single night and then escape anew in the most Buddhist way possible by flying into the mountain mist and finding enlightenment and merging with the cosmic energy of the mountains. The young man will remain behind and mourn her forever.
A love story film with two love stories crossing and in both cases love can be at most exchanged for a very short period of time because of full dedication to a wider and deeper objective, be it the loyalty to a sword and a martial art, or be it a Buddhist pledge to reach enlightenment. In both cases attachment is impossible, love is possible but cannot become an attachment, hence a permanent relation. Everything is impermanent and has to be impermanent not to enslave the person on the way to mental and spiritual liberation.
I just wonder though if that attachment to these principles is not an excessive attachment too and hence a blocking element on the path to "nibbana" with a trace of Tibetan Buddhism with the middle-age man who dies in the arms of the middle-age woman he has loved all his life without ever saying so: he declares his love before dying which becomes a blocking element on the path to his liberation and he knows it and chooses at this moment to be a ghost caught between the world of the living and the world of the dead, unable to escape this state till at last a rebirth, a reincarnation makes him a man again for him to have a second chance to reach "nibbana", enlightenment.
The beauty of the film is in the spectacular landscapes and mountain scenery, in the extreme power of the mental and spiritual sentiments and even passions, in the depth and faithfulness of their love and their friendship, and the impossible merging of this with Buddhism and martial arts that both require a pledge to total detachment and absolute dedication to a spiritual ideal.
This film has to be enjoyed like some extreme elixir from the most refined and intense essences and liquors. Then flying will become natural and the battle in the bamboo copses or groves will be a fairy show of intemporal human luxuriance.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU