Action Films vs Musicals

Step one: read this review of House of Flying Daggers from the New York Times:


MOVIE REVIEW | 'HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS'
"Fanciful Flights of Blood and Passion"
By A. O. SCOTT


The Chinese director Zhang Yimou first came to the attention of American audiences in the early 1990's, as the maker of stirring, visually glorious tales of historical turmoil and forbidden love like "Raise the Red Lantern" and "Ju Dou." Then, later in the decade, he entered a neo-realist phase, with rough-hewn, modest stories of peasant indomitability like "Not One Less" and "The Road Home."


Now in his early 50's, Mr. Zhang has embarked on the third chapter of an already dazzling career, reinventing himself as an action filmmaker, first with "Hero," a late-summer hit for Miramax, and now with "House of Flying Daggers," which Sony Classics is releasing.


Set in the twilight of the Tang Dynasty, and filmed, from the look of it, at the peak of China's foliage season, "House of Flying Daggers" is a gorgeous entertainment, a feast of blood, passion and silk brocade. But though the picture is full of swirling, ecstatic motion, it is not especially moving. A Chinese mainlander's tribute to the sword and martial-arts epics of the past, most of which were produced in Taiwan and Hong Kong, it also echoes the widescreen Technicolor westerns and musicals that the Hollywood studios cranked out in their early battle against television.


Mr. Zhang, who once directed a production of "Turandot" with a cast of thousands in the Forbidden City in Beijing, possesses an operatic ability to turn intimate stories into grand spectacles. His diva of the moment is Zhang Ziyi, whose delicate facial features fill the screen and whose lithe movements animate the film's heady combat choreography.


Ms. Zhang plays Mei, a blind courtesan who turns out to be a member of the Flying Daggers, a shadowy squad of assassins waging a guerrilla insurgency against the corrupt and decadent government. She is pursued by two government deputies, Leo (Andy Lau) and Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro), whose loyalties come into question as the chase turns into a love triangle. Everyone is engaged in several layers of deceit, and some of the third-act revelations are more likely to provoke laughter than gasps of amazement.


But realism is as irrelevant a criterion here as it would be in an Italian opera. The movie is about color, kineticism and the kind of heavy-breathing, decorous sensuality that went out of American movies when sexual candor came in. Occasionally, Ms. Zhang bares one of her lovely shoulders. If she showed any more, the projector might catch fire.


It might anyway, from the sheer audacious heat of some of the action sequences. Two in particular - the "echo game" set piece that takes place in a brothel and a later battle in a grove of whispering bamboo - are likely to become classic reference points, cherished like favorite numbers from "Singin' in the Rain." It is a commonplace that action movies are closely related to musicals, and few directors prove the point with as much discipline and flair. The bamboo-forest scene is not just a bravura exercise in vertical and horizontal choreography. It is also a heroic feat of sound design, with the whistle of the bamboo fronds played in counterpoint to the impact of cudgels and spears.


The story inevitably gets lost in this sensory barrage, and it is hard to feel much for the three lovers as they sing their climactic arias of jealousy and betrayal. The final confrontation takes place in the midst of a sudden snowstorm, which envelopes the sun-dappled field that had, a few moments earlier, been a perfect spot for al fresco love-making. And "House of Flying Daggers" itself, for all its fire and beauty, may leave you a bit cold in the end.



Now read this review from the Chicago Sun Times:



House of Flying Daggers
"Stylish scenes make 'Flying Daggers' soar"
BY ROGER EBERT / Dec 17, 2004


Movie imagery, which has grown brutal and ugly in many of the new high-tech action pictures, may yet be redeemed by the elegance of martial arts pictures from the East. Zhang Yimou's "House of Flying Daggers," like his "Hero" (2004) and Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2000) combines excitement, romance and astonishing physical beauty; to Pauline Kael's formula of "kiss kiss bang bang," we can now add "pretty pretty."


Forget about the plot, the characters, the intrigue, which are all splendid in "House of Flying Daggers," and focus just on the visuals. There are interiors of ornate elaborate richness, costumes of bizarre beauty, landscapes of mountain ranges and meadows, fields of snow, banks of autumn leaves and a bamboo grove that functions like a kinetic art installation.


The action scenes set in these places are not broken down into jagged short cuts and incomprehensible foreground action. Zhang stands back and lets his camera regard the whole composition, wisely following Fred Astaire's belief that to appreciate choreography you must be able to see the entire body in motion. Tony Scott of the New York Times is on to something when he says the film's two most accomplished action scenes are likely to be "cherished like favorite numbers from 'Singin' in the Rain' and 'An American in Paris.' " Try making that claim about anything in "Matrix" or "Blade Trinity."


The scenes in question are the Echo Game, and a battle in a tall bamboo grove. The Echo Game takes place inside the Peony Pavilion, a luxurious brothel that flourishes in the dying days of the Tang Dynasty, 859 A.D. An undercover policeman named Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) goes there on reports that the new dancer may be a member of the House of Flying Daggers, an underground resistance movement. The dancer is Mei (Zhang Ziyi, also in "Hero" and "Crouching Tiger"), and she is blind; martial arts pictures have always had a special fondness for blind warriors, from the old "Zatoichi" series about a blind swordsman to Takeshi Kitano's "Zatoichi" remake (2004).


After Mei dances for Jin, his fellow cop Leo (Andy Lau) challenges her to the Echo Game, in which the floor is surrounded by drums on poles, and he throws a nut at one of the drums. She is to hit the same drum with the weighted end of her long sleeve. First one nut, then three, then countless nuts are thrown, as Mei whirls in mid air to follow the sounds with beats of her own; like the house-building sequence in the Kitano picture, this becomes a ballet of movement and percussion.


Jin and Mei form an alliance to escape from the emperor's soldiers, Mei not suspecting (or does she?) that Jin is her undercover enemy. On their journey, supposedly to the secret headquarters of the House of Flying Daggers, they fall in love; but Jin sneaks off to confer with his Leo, who is following them with a contingent of warriors, hoping to be led to the hideout. Which side is Jin betraying?


Still other warriors, apparently not aware of the undercover operation, attack the two lovers, and there are scenes of improbable delight, as when four arrows from one bow strike four targets simultaneously. Indeed most of the action in the movie is designed not to produce death, but the pleasure of elegant ingenuity. The impossible is cheerfully welcome here.


The fight in the bamboo grove inspires comparison with the treetop swordfight in "Crouching Tiger," but is magnificent in its own way. Warriors attack from above, hurling sharpened bamboo shafts that surround the lovers, and then swooping down on tall, supple bamboo trees to attack at close range. The sounds of the whooshing bamboo spears and the click of dueling swords and sticks have a musical effect; if these scenes are not part of the soundtrack album, they should be.


The plot is almost secondary to the glorious action, until the last act, which reminded me a little of the love triangle in Hitchcock's "Notorious." In that film, a spy sends the woman he loves into danger, assigning her to seduce an enemy of the state, which she does for patriotism and her love of her controller. Then the spy grows jealous, suspecting the woman really loves the man she was assigned to deceive. In "House of the Flying Daggers" the relationships contain additional levels of discovery and betrayal, so that the closing scenes in the snow field are operatic in their romantic tragedy.


Zhang Yimou has made some of the most visually stunning films I've seen ("Raise the Red Lantern") and others of dramatic everyday realism ("To Live"). Here, and with "Hero," he wins for mainland China a share of the martial arts glory long claimed by Hong Kong and its acolytes like Ang Lee and Quentin Tarantino. The film is so good to look at and listen to that, as with some operas, the story is almost beside the point, serving primarily to get us from one spectacular scene to another.


Now spend a few minutes and take a look at these three scenes both reviews mentioned. The first is from the film.




The second is a very famous scene from the film Singin' in the Rain.




And the third is a nearly as famous scene from An American in Paris.




Maybe you noticed that Ebert, in the second review, directly referenced Scott from the first review. Well, there seems to be one point on which the two critics agree and one point on which the two critics disagree. Your task is to write one thoughtful, thorough paragraph to one of the two prompts I've set up in the comments below. (The first prompt is about the similarity I just mentioned, and the second prompt is about the difference.) This is not an online discussion; rather, it is a thoughtful response to a prompt. Again, your entry should be a well written paragraph posted in the response field of one of the two comments I've posted.

For extra credit you may write a second response to the other prompt.