SHI MIAN MAI FU ( House of the Flying Daggers, 2004) *** It may be a cultural thing, but it took me forever to get aligned with the rhythm of Yimou Zhang's film. The choreography-dance and violence-was wonderful, and the simply stated plot was appealing, but to Western sensibilities it didn't really move forward, particularly, somehow, despite all of the action depicted. The plot struck me as a form of violent haiku in its simplicity. Then it starts doubling back on itself and tangles, about the time when I'd started enjoying the film for what I thought it was: a lot of pretty shots, and a tour de force of motion playing counterpart & tangents with the strange efforts of humans. It's more than that, and it's a nice study in magical realism for those (of us) tempted to consider that a subset of surrealism, applied sparingly. So the once simple plot starts exploding in every which way, people are jumping in every impossible direction doing things beyond the boundaries of nature, and nature itself releases its pinion to reality. All in the name of love (Xiao Mei [credited as Zhang Ziyi] and Andy Lau....aaaaw, what a couple, get back!), and those gentle rains that fall on us from eternities.
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