|
King Hu's camera tracks along with soldiers as they enter a haunted fort, and it's like Mizoguchi is alive and well and shooting martial-arts epics. The basis is Pu Songling (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio), the progression is from a spider's web in the dark to the bleeding holy man whose radiance blocks out the sun. Part One introduces the callow scholar (Shih Chun), an aspiring portraitist whose mother scoffs at Confucian koans. His mysterious neighbor (Hsu Feng) is an incognito noblewoman with "unfinished business" with the East Chamber's evil Eunuch, her bodyguards (Bai Ying, Xue Han) are brave generals à la Kurosawa (The Hidden Fortress). She takes the bookworm to bed but is unsure about his contribution to her vengeful plans: "I'm afraid you are not the duel-to-the-death type." Part Two links the realms of politics and mysticism, and brings the scholar's knowledge of the mechanics of superstition into play—the morning reveals the trickery of the "army of ghosts" (and the real toll of battle). Next to Chang Cheh's studio arenas, Hu's battleground is an open-air temple: The moon is reflected on pond water, a slashed villain's blood squirts onto a shrine, the frame widens and the tempo quickens to encompass machinations and epiphanies. Hu stages skirmishes for force and beauty, for the synergy between the sumptuous physicality of the choreography and the grave spirituality of the landscape. The Abbot (Roy Chiao Hung) and his yellow-robed disciples quell imperial guards by a riverbed of white rocks, the ambush in the emerald-green forest contrasts the verticals of bamboo trees with the horizontals of daggers and arrows and the diagonals of airborne fighters. Chivalry, transcendence, Buddha's "heat haze" like Leone's desert. The final showdown adduces a note from Liang Kai's Drunken Celestial to complete the illumination. With Han Ying Chieh, Miao Tien, Chang Ping-Yu, Billy Chan, and Lam Ching-Ying.
--- Fernando F. Croce |