"Hero" and Subversion

[fabrisse]

eanja and I went to see Hero earlier today.

In our current political climate, I consider this to be a subversive movie. This has come from two lines.

The first is part of the written prologue: "In any war, there are heroes on both sides."

This is not, generally speaking, an American point of view. We're bad at recognizing the humanity of our enemies, and, I think, without recognizing the humanity we can't see the heroism.

Can anyone give me a U.S. equivalent to the "Christmas Armistice" from the first year of WWI?

The only time that we come close to looking at both sides and seeing the valor of both is during our Civil War. And I'm not too sure that's true from the Yankee side.

The second line is an actual line of dialogue which I'll paraphrase from the subtitles: "Remember that the ultimate goal of any warrior is to lay down his sword."

When I was a teenager, even though I was already coming to a pacifist point of view, I romanticized my father's profession. It was he who took me down a peg by referring to himself as "one of our country's elite killers."

That perspective of soldiering is one that we don't see while we're sending the troops off to war with the marching bands. The other side is a bunch of killers; our side are heroes. Neither side will lay down the sword -- them because they're evil, us because we fight evil.

The truth is both sides prefer to live in peace.

I only got a C in my first International Relations course. The main reasons were that I informed the professor (of International Systems) that I believed a single person's action or inaction could affect history. The second was that I agreed with a statement by Michael Howard in his book The Causes of War that the teacher characterized as ridiculous.

Howard says (and I recently discovered that the Dalai Lama agrees with him *g*) that peace is not merely the absence of war, but the absence of the threat of war.

The movie Hero shows us lands that are rarely peaceful because the threat of war is always there.


The film is ravishing. The fight between the two women in the autumnal forest was so sensual and powerful that I couldn't tear my eyes away. And seriously, I hate blood so I find it really easy to tear my eyes away from fight scenes.

Yimou Zhang use of color and sound was stunning. I wish I could find the words to explain the impact.

"Our land" makes far more sense than "Homeland" does to me.



Jet Li is pretty.

So is Zhang Ziyi.

I think I can say "Yes," in Chinese now, though as any two year old will tell you, "No," is more useful.

Did anyone else notice that the assassin Sky is still alive?

Comments

[undauntra.livejournal.com]

I wish you were here to talk about the movie with - I just saw it Saturday night.

One quick thought: consider the movie in light of the Chinese cultural norm of assimilating conquerors. Rulers come and go, of whatever people or nation. China endures.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Do you have any good recommendations for Chinese fairy tales or stories? Things that really bring home the cultural differences would be preferred.

I kept feeling through this, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that, as much as I was getting, there was another layer that I couldn't see because I didn't have the cultural background.

What was your favorite scene? Or did you have a favorite theme?

[undauntra.livejournal.com]

Alas, I don't have specific titles. It's more like "the little green book of Chinese fairy tales" or "The big beige clothbound about the monkey king with lots of color plates". Such is how a child's memory recalls things.

I cried at several points in the film, and was all wobbly and had a hard time walking out of the theater at the end.

My favorite scenes were both about choices, rather than pretty wirework: Broken Sword's decision to not parry (leading to his death) and the Emperor's decision to execute the Nameless one. It's easy to be brave in the heat of combat, accepting the possibility of death for a shot at your enemy. It's much harder to sacrifice your heart, knowing that even as you achieve your heart's desire it will be as ashes in your mouth. All you are left with is the desperate hope that someone else, somewhere, sometime, will appreciate what you've done and benefit by it - for you no longer can.

Which I suppose answers the question about theme, as well. Some sacrifices are infinitely more difficult than sacrificing one's life - and infinitely more worthwhile. This is a direct repudiation of one of the ideals of the warrior ethic, but it builds inexorably from the same foundations of honor and self-sacrifice. It trancends the ideal of heroism and glory in battle, by transforming combat from a goal to means - and then transforming the immediate goal of combat to a means again, over and over until all that remains is wisdom.

Why did Nameless study for 10 years? To perfect his swordsmanship.
Why did he perfect his swordsmanship? To kill the king of Qin.
Why did he want to kill the king of Qin? For the good of Zhao.

Once you perceive the ultimate goal, the intermediate steps blow away like dry leaves on the wind. This is the point of lateral thinking exercises; recognize the true goal, and discard preconceptions about what intermediate steps might be necessary.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Beautifully said.

And ultimately Nameless finds that the good of Zhao is to be united with the other kingdoms. Therefore the Emperor lives, but Nameless's ultimate goal -- the good of Zhao -- is attained.

On a completely shallow note: Did it bother you as much as it did me that the subtitles called Sky's Go game a game of chess?

[undauntra.livejournal.com]

I honestly didn't notice that they called it chess at all. Good heavens, I hardly noticed that it was subtitled - when I read subtitles, I automatically reparse the text as speech.

On a totally different note, the night sky out here is a deep blue-black and it's all full of stars! It's quite a change from the entire sky glowing an ambient orange - I sometimes think that the sky in Dragaera is based on Boston.