The Promise
"Once you have accepted your destiny, nothing can alter it unless rivers flow uphill, time runs backwards and the dead come back to life." --The Sorceress, Wuji-The Promise   As human beings, are we free to live out our lives according to our own desires, in accordance with our will, or are we merely powerless pawns in the hand of destiny? These are potent questions that in some way or another confront us all, sometimes in the most unexpected of ways. In a sense, I do believe that our fate is pre-determined. Yet paradoxically, I do not believe that this absolves us of our responsibility to try to alter it for the greater good, nor do I believe that fate has the final word. We might even say we are co-authors with fate of our destiny.   Of course, long before we began pre-production, I had conceptualized what the story would be: a beautiful Princess, a courageous Slave, an ambitious, charismatic Mighty General, an evil and cunning Duke, each propelled forward and entwined by vehement passions: greed, ambition, loyalty, revenge, the unremitting search for true love. Their dance with destiny would be choreographed not only by these powerful drives and desires, but also by promises and contracts made years before - each setting his or her own course for themselves earlier in life. Furthermore, I would set the story "3,000 years ago in the future, somewhere in Asia." That was the essence of the film, the premise from which I started. Yet a series of synchronicitous events unfolded that shaped the film in distinct ways that I had not previously envisaged.   The film you "plan" to make is not the one which you shoot - the film will unfold as it will. Perhaps fate whispers stories to us in our dreams, in our subconscious, and we are compelled to tell them. And yet we do have an opportunity to shape them, to embellish them, to make them our own.--Chen Kaige