Only peace remains

I decided to give Hero a second chance. Well, to be honest, it was the only thing on TV...But I tried to keep an open mind. I didn't want to be so cynical. Oh yeah, and I tried not to let the "puppet fighting" get to me so much...

First off, Dan, the fighting. From a special effects perspective the fighting really was amazing. To carry out a realistic sword fight while doing acrobatics...well we've come a long way since Mary Martin. And the flying leaves/wind were rather artistic.

More important, though, were the subtleties of the fight beneath the fight. Unlike American martial arts movies where it's about who's the best fighter, this was about who was the more controlled fighter, the wise fighter: unwilling to take their oponent's life even if they could. Which was why I loved Broken Sword. He carried off what Chow Yun-Fat could not: he was wise and emotional but not weak. In Crouching Tiger, Chow Yun-Fat's striving for perfection led him to hold back his feelings. He was not at peace with himself. In Hero, Broken Sword won't allow himself to be with Flying Snow because of their different philosophies--and he's right.

So I've changed my mind. Zhang Yimou wasn't encouraging weakness. There was nothing weak about Broken Sword or Nameless sacrificing themselves. They did not have to die. (They were the two best fighters)

The moral of the story, I see now, is what the King of Qin said at the end. Nameless is still not sure if he should assassinate the king or not, and the king is studying the calligraphy: the king vocalizes that the highest level of swordsmanship is, paradoxically, to do away with the sword:

The warrior embraces all around him. The desire to kill no longer exists. Only peace remains.

The first time I saw Hero I could only see it within a modern Chinese context. Now, as the wars in the Middle East reveal themselves to be a perpetuation of every war that ever was...I'm becoming sick of fighting. All fighting. It's lost a lot of its Hollywood glamour. Maybe that's what made me more open to Hero my second time around, or at least more pensive.