Lyrical Cinematography Keeps Pace With an Ambitious Tale

Rating: 10/10 (11 September 2011)

During China's ancient "Warring States" period, a solemn warrior appears at one royal palace bearing gifts: the collected weapons of three notorious assassins, whose prior attempt on the king's life did not succeed. Now paranoid due to the attack, the monarch sits alone in his throne room, not even his advisors allowed within a hundred paces, but allows this steady-eyed visitor to draw near as he tells his story. What follows is an act in three parts - two hypotheticals and a truth - that describe identical topics through biased eyes. We see fact stretched into fiction, though the telling is so sweeping, vivid and resonant that we often overlook the context clues.
Director Zhang Yimou's vision is breathtaking, an intricately detailed work of moving art that blends seamlessly with the romantic martial arts epic at its core. Fabricated memories take on a dreamy quality, reflecting the speaker's sweeping exaggerations. Fight scenes flow like syrup, a poetic ballet of impeccable fighting stances and wuxia acrobatics. Environments pulse with life and color. The lush, mesmerizing golds and reds of a leaf-coated orchard during autumn, perhaps the most memorable setting in a film that's absolutely stuffed with them, still leaves my jaw agape.
A strikingly gorgeous film, crafted with expert care, that's equally profound on a thematic level as it is on a compositional one. You'll want to watch it more than once.