House of Flying Daggers

So much to my surprise and delight, the local arthouse theatre here, The Wilma (http://www.thewilma.com/), actually got House of Flying Daggers. And I'm especially glad they picked it up, because it's a great theatre to see movies in. It's an old, classic style theatre (it's an 82-year-old historical landmark), but it's got digital sound and a top end screen. As rundown as the outside is starting to get, it's still the best theatre in town (but sadly that's because Montana is stuck with Carmike Cinemas for most of our theatres). Too bad most of the movies they get in aren't ones I'd normally be interested in seeing, especially if I have to pay for the privelege (I don't care how many awards it's won; after seeing the trailer for Sideways, the only way I'd go see it was if I was a movie critic who was getting paid to go see it).

I have to say, I really enjoyed House of Flying Daggers. While not quite as good a movie as Hero was, it still had it's strong points. Among them was the fact that it had its humorous moments (which Hero didn't really have), and like Hero, the fight scenes were spectacular. The actors were superb, and of course Zhang Ziyi was as lovely and enjoyable to watch as ever. The movie was a little disappointing in a couple of spots, however. Naturally, with movies of this sort, there's a fair amount of suspension of disbelief required to really enjoy them, which is fine, but in this case I think they pushed that boundary a little too far a few times, and a couple of scenes were just a little too over the top for me. But it's the story that I think really sells the movie for me. It's very engaging, and there are all kinds of twists and surprises that you just don't see coming (I didn't, anyways). You are completely drawn into the interactions between the three main characters. I won't spoil the ending, but considering that this is a Chinese film, it goes without saying that it doesn't end on a cheery note.

Which brings me to my next topic of discussion -- the differences between American movies and Chinese movies (or foreign films in general, for that matter). After really getting into Hong Kong action cinema, I found it very fascinating to compare the basic formulas between Chinese action/crime style movies, and Hollywood action/crime movies. Both genres have a very basic formula that almost all movies in the genre more or less follow, but the two different formulas have some very distinct differences, especially in regards to how the movie ends. Let's take a look at the Hollywood formula first. With a Hollywood movie, the climax/ending pretty much falls along these lines: villain kidnaps girl, hero confronts and defeats villain, thus saving the girl, then hero and girl ride off into the sunset. Very much your standard happily-ever-after Hollywood ending. Obviously the specifics will be different, but if you go over the base storyline of almost any action movie to come out of Hollywood, you'll see that it follows this basic formula.

Now let's look at the Chinese formula: villain kills girl, so hero confronts and defeats villain, avenging girl. As you can probably guess, this formula doesn't exactly leave a lot of room for a happy ending. Instead, you get what I think of as a bittersweet ending; you get the satisfaction of knowing the bad guy got what was coming to him, but at the same time your hero has to deal with the grief of having lost the girl he loves. And this is pretty much the standard formula you'll find for almost all Chinese action films (at least, pretty much all of the ones I've seen, anyways). Being an American who's expecting the guy to get the girl in the end, it was always a shock to me to see the girl die, but after a while you get used to it, and now whenever I see a Chinese film, I go into it expecting the ending to be fairly dark.

I think this is one of the things that's always drawn me to foreign films -- movies very much represent the culture that made them, and it's really intriguing to see the cultural differences that show up. It's also interesting to see the common threads that run through movies. I don't think a person really realizes just how similar Hollywood movies are within a genre until they've watched a few movies of that genre from another country. Then you see just how differently the films can be done from what you're used to. I mean, imagine, for example, that Diehard had been made in Hong Kong. Suddenly you'd end up seeing McClane forced to watch Hans Gruber killing his wife, then he'd get his vengeance on him, and end the film morning the death of his wife. It's suddenly not quite the same movie at that point.

For anyone who's a fan of movies at all, I'd strongly recommend seeing a few foreign films (not just Hollywood remakes of foreign films -- go see the real thing!). Reading subtitles during a movie isn't THAT big a deal, no matter what some people seem to think. And watching the movie dubbed into English just isn't the same as hearing the actual actors' voices. You might end up with a whole new perspective on the American movies you normally watch.