La asesina

Hou Hsiao-Hsien is one of those directors the mere mention of whose name sends filmsnobs into paroxysms of pleasure. 'The Assassin' is the first of his films that I myself have seen, and I've got to say I have mixed feelings.

I was attracted to the film by the set designs featured in the trailer, and these are fantastic: lush, richly-detailed, lavish reproductions of nobles' palaces and peasants' hovels. The costumes are similarly splendid. The natural scenery is spectacular also, with Hou taking full advantage of the endless steep wooded hillsides of his Far Eastern filming locations.

But oh, the pace of the film is slow. Far too often, Hou allows his camera to linger, unmoving, on a particular subject that is doing nothing - certainly not adding anything to the story. This may be because of the sparse nature of the plot - a young woman in ninth century China, raised from childhood to be an assassin, is sent back to her native Weibo to assassinate her cousin, the region's governor. Once there she gets caught up in some palace intrigue, but it's all sketched out very lightly and, to be honest, for some of the time I was having trouble staying awake.

But those sets *are* gorgeous...

Probably the best way to watch "The Assassin" is to play it as 1.5 times the speed. On a serious note, the film takes Wuxia to an entirely different level. If Ozu had made Wuxia films then probably those films would have looked something like "The Assassin". Watching the film is like studying a life in slow motion. While the detailing is meticulous, the storytelling style can best be described as tedious. The action sequences, although beautifully choreographed, are minimalistic in style.

In her third collaboration with the master Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Shu Qi delivers a mesmerizing performance while playing a part that's tender and feral in equal parts. It's difficult to detest the ferocious killer she has become. It's difficult not to fall in love with the assassin who once was a princess. It's difficult not to be in awe of Hou Hsiao-Hsien after watching the film. It's difficult to wipe off the images from one's mind long after the end credits begin to roll. It's difficult to watch it just once.

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I'm surprised by the bad reviews on IMDb. I think the problem is that a film titled "The Assassin" happens to attract a certain type of audience--people who are only interested in martial arts flicks, or who walk in expecting an action-packed adrenaline ride. You might be disappointed in this film, but I don't think this movie was meant for you.

A previous review mentioned the "depressed, stilted tones" of the actors.

I don't know what you were expecting ... an assassin during the Tang Dynasty to burst out into song about her inner anguish and emotional turmoil? I watched an interview with Hou Hsiao-hsien, the director who won the prestigious Best Director award at Cannes for this very film. He used a tennis analogy to explain it perfectly, so I'm just going to paraphrase below:

"If you watch the tennis greats like Federer or Nadal battling it out, there's not much expression on their faces. The speed that they're going at, the power in each exchange, there's no room for emotions."

The director, Hou, actually instructed Shu Qi (The Assassin) to tone down her expressions. The crew filmed the fight sequences again, and again, and again, until the actors were all bruised up and the fight flowed naturally, by instinct. By this point, there was really no need for dialogue or excessive expressions.

If you're an assassin fighting for your life, kill or be killed, are you really going to be thinking "let me get my blue steel pout ready for the camera"?

If you can get over the need for overly dramatic expositions and go into a film knowing the main character only has approximately nine spoken lines, and if you can enjoy a film for how starkly beautiful it is.... this might be the film for you.

Birdman was a weird movie that was filled with stellar performances and nuanced scenes. It won at the Oscars because it was a film about film and theater makers, but few regular people actually got it at the level it was meant to. Even so, it was a great film on several levels.

I say this because The Assassin is kind of the same, but not giving a damn if you understand or not what is going on. The scenes are beautiful and I am sure filled with significance that grows the more Chinese you are or the more versed you are in the "art of the scene". For the regular viewer, though, is a very slow story related to Chinese characters that kind of dress the same, look the same and rarely say anything. When they do say something, they choose the minimal amount of words to convey nuanced meaning - which are then translated to English.

An adaptation of a Chinese story that has little to do with anything but the beginning of the film, this is more about the inner world of the girl assassin as portrayed by beautiful scenery and slow, calm, cricket noise filled sound. Or at least I think it is. I might be wrong.

Bottom line: great action scenes, all 4 or 5 of them. They all last for a few seconds each. Great dialogue, the 20 or so lines in all the movie. Fantastic nature shots and historically accurate decor, in the rest of the film. Not a film you will hate, but imagine you are watching people you can't distinguish one from another and that are prone to fight for a minute before they say anything... if they even do.

Honestly I wasn't sure how to feel about this film after seeing it.

It looks absolutely gorgeous. The cinematography and production design are really top notch. If I were to judge the merits of this film based purely on its visuals, then I think I'd give it something closer to a 9 or 10. The visuals also comprise some of the best parts of the story telling. Occasionally the film will present an image without context, only to later have the meaning of that image revealed by a character in whatever dialogue driven scene will directly follow that image. It's pretty neat and adds an nice component to the visual splendor beyond simply the surface level appeal.

This element of the visual element of the film though, does hint at what is probably this film's greatest weakness. In the same way that one can become really confused when viewing some of the key images without their meaning revealed until after their presentation, the story of the film as a whole is potentially incomprehensible. I don't think it's because it's necessarily too complicated either. It seems more like the director had no patience for conveying information to the audience. There are key pieces of exposition early on which are never referenced again and that you could easily miss if you aren't laser focused from minute one. This is a problem throughout the film and it's not even limited to expository dialogue. There is one scene in particular when two characters are having what I assume was a deadly showdown. Again, visually very nice. The problem though, was that I couldn't tell who one of the character's was, if they had been mentioned/featured in the film previously, or why the fight was even really happening to begin with.

It's honestly really frustrating, because this film seems to squander so much of the potential I see in the visual elements for reasons that I can't understand. The incomprehensible nature of the story is frankly needless, and I think it severely limits the amount of people who can truly enjoy it. I like a lot of it, and I might watch it again in the future. I think before I recommend it though, I should preface that recommendation by saying that you can't let your attention falter for even a moment, lest you lose track of the narrative completely.