But for the second film in a row, director Zhang Yimou is concerned less with the story than with the telling of it, so the merits of House of Flying Daggers cannot be boiled down into discussions of plot points and performances. To do so, to merely reiterate key moments of storytelling while informing you that actress Zhang Ziyi burns like a young sword-wielding Audrey Hepburn, would slight a masterpiece that must be seen to be believed. House of Flying Daggers, the second film from Yimou to be released stateside this year, isn't mere product to be pondered and peddled and consumed and passed through the system. It's something that should be hung on a wall and marveled at -- all those beautiful colors and beautiful faces and beautiful costumes and beautiful poses, begging to be savored and lingered over by those not in a hurry to catch a late dinner or pay the baby-sitter. It's a movie so wide-screen that it often seems to bleed into the neighboring theater. Its exquisiteness can overwhelm in a single sitting.
On its surface, House of Flying Daggers could be taken as an exercise in the oh-so-familiar, a traditional kung-fu action film dolled up for the opera-hall (or art-house) crowd, with its brocade garments and elaborate sets that seem to be constructed out of porcelain and silk; even the swords seem to sing as they slice through the air, like animated characters in a Disney movie. Yimou, once a maker of historical dramas and neo-realist slices of life, doesn't go in for the junk and muck of Hong Kong action movies; he's too old for that nonsense, too mature for that mindlessness. He merely uses the accoutrements of Hong Kong movies (and 1950s American westerns and the Technicolor melodramas of Douglas Sirk) to tell love stories in which his politics have taken a back seat in another vehicle altogether.
Like Hero, Yimou's film released in China in 2002 and made available by Miramax in the U.S. this summer, Flying Daggers ratchets up the high-wire razzle-dazzle used by Ang Lee in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and sets the volume at 11. People don't merely dance across treetops; they soar above them like supermen whose feet have never even touched ground. They don't dodge single spears, but whole skyfuls, raining down like storms of razor-edged steel. Yes, some of these scenes are fleshed out with the aid of computer-generated imagery, but those bits and bytes never leave the movie feeling cold or empty or wanting. Yimou, using a palette of autumnal colors that finally and forebodingly gives way to a blanket of snow tipped blood-red, makes his film as warm as a hearth.
Especially fiery is the relationship between Jin, Mei, and another man whose identity shall remain secret (indeed, the second half of the movie devolves into a series of plot twists that will surprise as many in the audience as it will amuse to the point of titters). When first Jin and Mei meet, she's posing as a performer in a whorehouse, and Jin uses his sword to disrobe her, one fastener at a time; it's a seduction and threat, a cop taunting a suspect who also happens to turn him on. But, of course, theirs is a relationship that burgeons into an impractical (but not wholly improbable) love affair that they, and we, know is doomed. As much as they come to care for each other, no one adores them more than director Yimou, who lingers on their faces whenever the action takes a pause. It's as though he himself is standing onscreen, playfully punching Kaneshiro's square jaw or tenderly caressing Ziyi's porcelain skin. His heart breaks enough for both of them.
