Movie impressions - II
Continuing the Telluride @ Dartmouth festival tonight was the Chinese film "House of Flying Daggers". Since it's totally in the same genre as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and even stars Zhang Ziyi from that movie, comparisons are inevitable. Indeed, I've already told you 90% of what you need to know about the movie. All that remains is to point out the major differences.
The storyline of HoFD is simple: set in 10th century China, with the Tang dynasty's power waning, it pits the corrupt government against a shadowy rebel group called Flying Daggers. Hero works for govt, heroine for FD; you can guess what transpires. They both end up on the run from the police and run into occasional ambushes featuring martial arts and lush forest scenery. So far so good.
Though gravity-defying action sequences abound in HoFD, they are much more believable than those in CTHD. Unfortunately, HoFD goes for a more ludicrous kind of fantasy: defying conservation of mass. I mean mass, as in human bodies! We repeatedly see our two protagonists begin a fight sequence against four enemies and end the same fight having felled about twenty. Why do I feel so bothered by this? After all I'm forgiving them the flagrant violations of conservation of angular momentum (the daggers which fly and whirl in eye-popping fashion). And I'm even forgiving them the ridiculous set up they used to give the plot two wicked twists.
Talking of plot, it's thicker than you might expect based on what I've outlined above, but overall it's a disaster. It's not because of the set up I've mentioned above; it's because the twists come a little past the halfway point. After this, the movie plunges rapidly into cheesy Bollywood territory with mortal wounds failing to be deadly for just long enough to allow three different characters to weep, howl, and show the power of love.
I would give this a 6/10; it did have a spectacular first half. Yesterday's "Being Julia" deserved an 8/10. For comparison, I gave last year's Lars von Trier film "Dogville" the only 9/10.
The storyline of HoFD is simple: set in 10th century China, with the Tang dynasty's power waning, it pits the corrupt government against a shadowy rebel group called Flying Daggers. Hero works for govt, heroine for FD; you can guess what transpires. They both end up on the run from the police and run into occasional ambushes featuring martial arts and lush forest scenery. So far so good.
Though gravity-defying action sequences abound in HoFD, they are much more believable than those in CTHD. Unfortunately, HoFD goes for a more ludicrous kind of fantasy: defying conservation of mass. I mean mass, as in human bodies! We repeatedly see our two protagonists begin a fight sequence against four enemies and end the same fight having felled about twenty. Why do I feel so bothered by this? After all I'm forgiving them the flagrant violations of conservation of angular momentum (the daggers which fly and whirl in eye-popping fashion). And I'm even forgiving them the ridiculous set up they used to give the plot two wicked twists.
Talking of plot, it's thicker than you might expect based on what I've outlined above, but overall it's a disaster. It's not because of the set up I've mentioned above; it's because the twists come a little past the halfway point. After this, the movie plunges rapidly into cheesy Bollywood territory with mortal wounds failing to be deadly for just long enough to allow three different characters to weep, howl, and show the power of love.
I would give this a 6/10; it did have a spectacular first half. Yesterday's "Being Julia" deserved an 8/10. For comparison, I gave last year's Lars von Trier film "Dogville" the only 9/10.
posted by AC at 11:54 PM
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