Hero

When another famous Chinese director An Lee succeed with his classy fighting movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," it encouraged traditional Chinese director Zhang Yimou to finance an artistic fighting movie of his dream. Zhang Yimou’s pervious movies were often banned in China. But this time “Hero” has the full support from the Chinese government.

"Hero" is abstractedly based on an assassination attempt on the cruel King of Qin. He controlled the most aggressive of the seven States in China at the time. Nameless (played by Jet Li) has approached to the King in the distance of ten steps which has never been achieved before. Many assassins have failed such as three famous assassins from enemy state Zhao. But Nameless chooses not to kill the king because of the king’s achievement as unifying China.

Hero is really a martial arts poem painted in colors. He identify the colors that shape the major parts: Red, blue, white and green. Red suggests passionate, deception and compulsion. Blue suggests explanation and intelligence. White suggests purity and spotless. Green suggests enlightenment and wisdom. Nameless’ wears black, which suggests death. With Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle and the role of digital special effects, Zhang Yimou assembles different sections from the screenplay, which evolves from unreliable to reliable narration, using isolated color schemes.

Another unique cinematic part of Hero is its use of theatrical sound. Strings of traditional Chinese Guzheng and dynamic drums may be integral to the film’s tone, but sounds of martial arts action sequences capture the poetry of complicated characters. Like opera vocal performance in To Live by Zhang Yimou in 1994 , it is a similar type of “expressive singing” overlays the scenes which Nameless struggles with Sky to a harp and in Broken Sword’s ritualistic encounter with Nameless on water. The film has a serious tone from the very start with the distant poundings of deep drums.

Hero is a symbolic movie. Every symbols point to one identity: “MADE IN CHINA.” Chinese chess, calligraphy, sword, koto, landscapes, bamboo, bows and arrows, palaces, sandy climate, red walls and green tiles, Heroes is a highly artistic Chinese paintings. With its massive special visual effects, actors’ performance has been weakened. Characters’ personality and expressions are no longer as important as Zhang Yimou’s other movies. Changes of clothing colors, sceneries, props, represents loyalty, justices, love and time frames, visual language play more important roles in this movie than acting instead. The cinematography with its extraordinary lighting effects and expressively saturated color create a surrealistic “Hero”.