Breathtaking

Rating: 9/10 (14 October 2003)

I went to see "Hero" without knowing much about it---be it director, actors, story.
As the movie started I thought "Very nice cinematography and set design, Chinese aesthetics at a very high level." As the movie progressed and the first fight scenes came up, my thoughts were "Well, but it's still very much like 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' ." But then, as the movie progressed, I could see it was not. It was much better.
"Hero" has all the choreography and acrobatics of CTHD, but with a much more stunningly beautiful visual design. It is shot, after shot, after shot, that smashes you through sheer beauty of just the projected image, very often with only a minimalistic combination of shapes and colors. You can think of Gus van Sant's "Gerry," only different.
And when you start to get the overall picture of the story, you are faced with one that has ramifications and bifurcations and exploration of different viewpoints, very much like (and I would almost say at almost the same level of quality) many of the short stories that came out of the pen of Jorge Luis Borges. (My apologies for a possibly crass comparison between a product pertaining to Chinese culture and one pertaining to Western culture---this is a mapping that, in my lack of knowledge of Chinese culture, helped me establish cross-references.) And the overall sense of the story is one of greatness and nobility of mind.
Overall, this movie has been one of my most satisfying movie experiences in the last years.