Hero: The Elegance of Violence
Two women in red dresses in a field of cherry trees duel to the death. There is no brutality or cruelty being expressed, no raw movements of aggression or hate. Their duel is peaceful. It is almost sensual, these two giving every ounce of their being to a form of war that’s alien to most viewers. They seem like they wish this battle could go on forever, without violence being enacted, just the tangible sensation of the fight flowing through them until the end of time. When the violence does come, it never lingers or even shows the fatal blow. It is all about the heartbreaking reactions of seeing someone that matters to you die by your hands, having to live with yourself as the consequence for winning. Hero is all about this principle, the elegance of two people devoting everything they have to a war, the remarkable craft of mastering a sword and spear. Yet it has hatred towards the design and consequence of these moments of decay. Over the course of the film, only a single drop of blood is spilled and it is immediately contrasted to the rain. Before death, there is beauty to be found in living on the edge of existence.
Hero’s narrative structure is based around Jet Li’s nameless assassin coming into the domain of his king and telling him a story about how he defeated the three deadliest killers in the kingdom. We see his initial telling of the tale, the king’s paranoid interpretation and eventually the truth somewhere near the end. Most of the images are based off of subjective perception and even deceit but they are still overwhelmingly profound. Zhang Yimou is clearly basing the style and structure of the film off of classical wuxia and Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, but is crafting something entirely new in the process. While Rashomon is focused on concretely trying to forge the truth out of different perceptions, Hero is disinterested in the reality of whatever tale it’s telling. Just like with death, it has no desire to craft a story lingering on realism and what images are truly the correct ones. Hero is all about artifice and makes every moment emotionally palpable regardless of its reality. We see the same scene, a lover being forced to kill another in private so they can sacrifice themselves in public several times throughout the film, eventually coming to the realisation that we will never exactly know how it happened to them. The fundamental events are the same but each context is different, Yimou eliciting several distinct forms of emotional devastation from the source. There is hope within all of us that the next time we see them, they will be able to escape fate, to be able to spend their future together without violence. There is still that hope lingering on hours after it ended.
Hero’s biggest strength is the gorgeous visuals. Every frame is spellbinding, luscious beyond belief. Basic shots without combat are beautiful, intensely focused on each detail of the environment, the way light bounces off fabrics, the ways characters are physically relating to each other. The distance between Li and his king is the most obvious example of Yimou’s spatial awareness but it comes through prominently in fight scenes, where every miniscule detail in posture and positioning becomes crucial. There is a patience in the way every action sequence is shot, it lingers just the right amount, feeling peaceful most of the time. The editing is immaculate and restrained, segueing between cuts like a dream. There is so much attention paid to the grace notes, slicing through hair and fabric, the water dripping down off of rooftops, the swords descending into water with grace. Hero believes in martial arts and armed combat as a form of creative expression, of love, that is a fundamentally beautiful way to exist in the world. Without violence being a necessity, the dream would be for all moments of combat to be like one on a lake here. Two people defying physics, space and time to battle each other in the air, getting lost to the ambience of the environment and the feeling of two swords clashing together. It’s like there is nothing else in the world.
The moment that stands out the most is a sequence close to the beginning. A kingdom is under siege, a place where the art of calligraphy is taught and performed is being attacked, innocents destined to perish. Arrows outside are flying like a swarm of locusts, descending onto civilians with merciless vengeance. Inside this academy, students are dying and panicking, graceless weapons of death are penetrating somewhere that they do not belong. Their master storms in, instead of escorting them to shelter, he talks about the fact that their calligraphy can never be taken away from them, unlike their lives. He sits down as arrows fly by him and continues to work on his final masterpiece. We see cuts to another man, one of the assassins engaging in his own calligraphy as this occurs, the movements of the brush are so similar to the way the sword glides through water. Art is interconnected. There is nothing here but love for whatever invigorates your soul. They can never take that away from you.
