Most beautiful film ever made?

Rating: 9/10 (29 September 2004)

Well maybe, maybe not, but there's no doubt it's something special. Right from the films opening moments through to the spectacular finale, Ying Xiong (Hero) manages to create both a sense of scale to equal Lord of the Rings while focussing on the individual stories of the central characters.
Although this is advertised as Jet Li's film, and while he certainly has the lion's share of the action, the heart of this film belongs to Tony Leung Chiu Wai (Broken Sword) and Maggie Cheung (Flying Snow). Their romance, while not the main plot of the film, is by far the most intimate and intriuging part of a film which doesn't shy away from trying to link a story around its mind-blowing action sequences.
Whether it achieves this is debatable, for while the Sword/Snow subplot has substance the main plot, although simply told, has its problems, especially as an audience trying to follow the story through subtitles may get slightly confused from time to time as to what exactly just happened. But just be glad the studio resisted the urge to dub it, for having the film in any language other than Mandarin would surely detract from it.
Having said that though, the most compelling sequences are those where everyone shuts up and the astounding cinematography does the talking. Every fight scene from the golden autumn forest to the tranquil lake is beautifully choreographed and wonderfully shot. The film is told as a series of flashbacks, with each one having a different colour theme, such as Red, Blue, White and Green. But although this may sound like a gimmick to Western audiences, each colour represents an emotion in China and all the colour themes are just subtle enough so that, while still glaringly obvious, they act only as an aid to the story, rather than taking it over.
This is an astonishingly beautiful film to look at and, although the central story is a little thin, fine performances and the aforementioned fight scenes mean this film is a cut above most martial arts films.