On the question of whether one would like this film, lot of it is dependent on whether you prefer Shakespeare or Sophocles in tragedy. As in the tragedy is not character-driven, but fate-driven, if you get my drift. It is about people born into the wrong time, rather than people who make the wrong decisions. This film is strictly Sophocles, not Shakespeare. In fact, it borrows heavily off classical Greek tragedy in its structure, along with three Mandarins who act as a Chorus.
Jet Li stars as an ambitious general with Utopian ideals in late Qing China during the turbulent Taiping era. Western Colonialism was making its presence felt, and the crumbling dynasty as unable to stop it as everyone played for himself in a game of see who's the last rat to dive off the sinking ship. The Taiping Rebellion was also promising a Christian Utopia, but led by madmen every bit as fanatical as anyone that got drunk on religion will ever get, seemed like hardly an alternative.
Probably the only Chinese epic I have seen (fittingly, since its setting was the Taiping Rebellion) to have used Christian imagery, including a really bastardized retelling of the miracle of the loaves and fishes that would border on sacrilegious if taken out of context. Watch out for one scene involving a baptism pool. Beautifully done.
Visually though it is meticulous, barring some sloppy special effects here and there. The entire film feels like a Sergio Leone wetdream. Blasted heaths, wrecked buildings, windswept plains and rainy nights all combine for an atmospheric effect akin to the best Westerns that ever came out of Hollywood's Golden Age.
However, one key determinant will make or break your liking for the film. I have always preferred Shakespearean tragedy to Greek, and wonder why current Chinese filmmakers have yet to make a competent Shakespearean tragedy. (And no, I did not like THE BANQUET). And the fact that the film was classically Greek in structure and storytelling was the bit of a letdown for me. I admire its panache, its style, its storytelling, most of everything about it, except that somehow I never really engaged with the characters and their struggles.
What I feel a lot of people are missing out, or may be, is that this really the antithesis of Heroic Cinema, it is Anti-Heroic cinema. A harsh satire on the limits of principle and self-righteousness of not just Chinese rulers, but also many of the self-proclaimed "heroes" of Chinese history. Yet all of them are also prisoners of their time and culture. The characters of Kaneshiro and Lau are bandits, and as such, their moral outlook is painfully limited, to them there is only the "fellow outlaw" to be faithful to, not the people. They claim moral high ground, but instead when they rush into battle their cry is always to get rich, fed and laid: nothing more than the aspirations of a common criminal. Jet Li's character, Pang Qingyun, believes that he is faithful to the people, even if this also means killing POWs, has a claim that "in war, only winning matters!" and thus in the end is also ousted by a bloodthirsty political culture in which "only winning matters". The characters all appear to be doing right in their own eyes, but they are constricted by their society and their culture and their period into being painfully flawed figures. This is where THE WARLORDS strikes gold among recent Chinese epics. It may be read as a rebuttal to what appears as character in history, but is really sanctimony, and perhaps strikes at the heart of the fact that all heroic narratives are written by the victors, and therefore all heroic narrative is inherently sanctimonious.
PS And is it just me, or does everyone want to borrow off Hans Zimmer's score for GLADIATOR now?
Jet Li stars as an ambitious general with Utopian ideals in late Qing China during the turbulent Taiping era. Western Colonialism was making its presence felt, and the crumbling dynasty as unable to stop it as everyone played for himself in a game of see who's the last rat to dive off the sinking ship. The Taiping Rebellion was also promising a Christian Utopia, but led by madmen every bit as fanatical as anyone that got drunk on religion will ever get, seemed like hardly an alternative.
Probably the only Chinese epic I have seen (fittingly, since its setting was the Taiping Rebellion) to have used Christian imagery, including a really bastardized retelling of the miracle of the loaves and fishes that would border on sacrilegious if taken out of context. Watch out for one scene involving a baptism pool. Beautifully done.
Visually though it is meticulous, barring some sloppy special effects here and there. The entire film feels like a Sergio Leone wetdream. Blasted heaths, wrecked buildings, windswept plains and rainy nights all combine for an atmospheric effect akin to the best Westerns that ever came out of Hollywood's Golden Age.
However, one key determinant will make or break your liking for the film. I have always preferred Shakespearean tragedy to Greek, and wonder why current Chinese filmmakers have yet to make a competent Shakespearean tragedy. (And no, I did not like THE BANQUET). And the fact that the film was classically Greek in structure and storytelling was the bit of a letdown for me. I admire its panache, its style, its storytelling, most of everything about it, except that somehow I never really engaged with the characters and their struggles.
What I feel a lot of people are missing out, or may be, is that this really the antithesis of Heroic Cinema, it is Anti-Heroic cinema. A harsh satire on the limits of principle and self-righteousness of not just Chinese rulers, but also many of the self-proclaimed "heroes" of Chinese history. Yet all of them are also prisoners of their time and culture. The characters of Kaneshiro and Lau are bandits, and as such, their moral outlook is painfully limited, to them there is only the "fellow outlaw" to be faithful to, not the people. They claim moral high ground, but instead when they rush into battle their cry is always to get rich, fed and laid: nothing more than the aspirations of a common criminal. Jet Li's character, Pang Qingyun, believes that he is faithful to the people, even if this also means killing POWs, has a claim that "in war, only winning matters!" and thus in the end is also ousted by a bloodthirsty political culture in which "only winning matters". The characters all appear to be doing right in their own eyes, but they are constricted by their society and their culture and their period into being painfully flawed figures. This is where THE WARLORDS strikes gold among recent Chinese epics. It may be read as a rebuttal to what appears as character in history, but is really sanctimony, and perhaps strikes at the heart of the fact that all heroic narratives are written by the victors, and therefore all heroic narrative is inherently sanctimonious.
PS And is it just me, or does everyone want to borrow off Hans Zimmer's score for GLADIATOR now?