Cannes Film Festival: Hou Hsiao-Hsien Takes a Detour Into Martial Arts
By AMY QINMAY 12, 2015
A scene from Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s martial arts film “The Assassin,” which will have its premiere at Cannes. Credit Tsai Cheng-tai/SpotFilms Co. Ltd.
BEIJING — It has been eight years since the Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s last feature-length film, the elliptical “Flight of the Red Balloon” starring Juliette Binoche, opened the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes International Film Festival.
During this time, the renowned arthouse director dedicated much of his energy to building up the independent cinema scene at home in Taiwan, serving as chairman of both the Taipei Film Festival and the executive committee of the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival.
But Mr. Hou, 68, said there was another reason for his prolonged absence: He was recreating the Tang Dynasty.
In a Skype interview from Taipei last week, Mr. Hou spoke of the painstaking research efforts undertaken for his newest film, “The Assassin,” a Tang Dynasty-era martial arts epic set to premiere on May 21 at the 68th annual Cannes festival.
The film, which features the actress Shu Qi in the title role, is the director’s seventh film to compete for the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize. Previously, Mr. Hou took home the Jury Prize for his 1993 film “The Puppetmaster,” the second in his trilogy of films dealing with modern Taiwanese history.
Qi Shu plays the title role, a young girl who is kidnapped and trained to become a killer. Credit Tsai Cheng-tai/SpotFilms Co. Ltd.
Based on a popular legendary tale from the Tang Dynasty, “The Assassin” or “Nie Yinniang” in Chinese, takes place in the year 809 and tells the story of a young girl who is kidnapped by a nun and eventually trained to become a skilled assassin (Ms. Shu).
After failing a mission, she is sent by her master back to her hometown, 13 years after she was taken away, and is given a new target: the most powerful military governor in the North, a man who also happens to be both her cousin and her childhood love (played by Chang Chen).
The film represents the first foray into the traditional martial arts genre for Mr. Hou, who first rose to prominence in the 1980s as a key figure in the New Taiwan Cinema movement. He is best known for his layered meditations on Taiwanese identity within the context of the island’s turbulent 20th-century history.
“I’ve always had a dream to make this story into a film. I first came across the Tang Dynasty legendary tales when I was in university studying film and before that I had read many wuxia stories when I was a child,” Mr. Hou said, referring to China’s rich tradition of martial arts stories. “But I could never make the film because it required such a large amount of financing.”
Now, a string of internationally acclaimed films later, Mr. Hou has less difficulty finding investors. With a budget of around $14 million, “The Assassin” is the director’s biggest production to date. Costs were split between Sil-Metropole Organization, a Hong Kong production company, and Mr. Hou’s film studio, 3H Productions.
In taking on a wuxia film, Mr. Hou is joining a growing number of commercial and arthouse directors from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Prominent examples from recent years include Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” (2000), Zhang Yimou’s “Hero” (2002), and Wong Kar-Wai’s “The Grandmaster” (2013). Even Jia Zhangke, China’s top independent film director, is said to be preparing a big-budget martial arts film. (In the meantime, Mr. Jia’s latest film “Mountains May Depart,” his first to be filmed partly outside of China (in Australia), will be competing alongside “The Assassin” at this year’s festival.)
Still, Mr. Hou’s decision to make a martial arts film has aroused interest among followers of his work, many of whom are wondering whether he has abandoned his signature contemplative style for high-intensity subject matter.
“It’s hard to imagine a director with Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s particular style — distant camera, slow takes and long takes — doing a wuxia film, which is very fast-cutting,” said Shelly Kraicer, a film critic in Toronto who is a scholar of Chinese cinema. “It has to be a different procedure for him, so it’ll be fascinating to see a director of his stature approach this experiment.”
Chang Chen plays the protagonist's intended target, a military governor who also happens to be both her cousin and her childhood love. Credit Tsai Cheng-tai/SpotFilms Co. Ltd.
Mr. Hou, who began working on the screenplay in 2012, said that it would be different from other directors’ wuxia films and that he had remained true to his long-established approach.
“I rarely do costume pictures,” he said. “The Tang Dynasty element will be very new but I think people will see that my filming process is the same. It’s still long takes and a static camera. The actors have just changed their clothes and altered their accents a little.”
He added that he made minimal use of computer-generated effects. “I didn’t want the actors to be flying here or there,” he said, referring to the acrobatic feats in wuxia films like “Crouching Tiger.” “There’s essentially no flying.”
Hwarng Wern-Ying, the film’s production and costume designer and a veteran member of Mr. Hou’s creative team, said this time around Mr. Hou seemed even more meticulous in his attention to detail than she had seen in the past.
“He might film only one scene in one day, and then he would film that scene five or six times in one week,” she said. “Then a few months later he’d ask us to go back and film that same scene again but I had already dismantled the set.”
Mr. Hou said that he endeavored to make the film as realistic as possible, a culmination, he said, of several years of scrupulous research into historical accounts of the Tang Dynasty, which ruled China from 618 to 906. It is often referred to as the “golden age” of Chinese civilization, a time when trade and culture flourished and Chang’an, the cosmopolitan dynastic capital, was the largest city in the world.
“Everyone has a different understanding of what the Tang Dynasty was like and I think this film will be a very pure representation of Hou’s vision of that time,” Ms. Hwarng said.
In the film, the actors speak classical Chinese, a decision Mr. Hou said he made to enhance the period feel. The language also turned out to be the “biggest challenge” during the filmmaking process, said the director, since classical Chinese was mostly used for literary texts and almost never spoken. The final version includes Chinese subtitles.
Admirers of Mr. Hou’s work may be pleased to know that the director does not plan to wait another eight years to make his next film.
“There are so many movies I want to make,” he said. “Even just in terms of Taiwan’s history the possibilities are endless.” He added that he was already in talks to make a film about the Taiwanese Communist Party under Japanese and later Kuomintang rule.
A version of this special report appears in print on May 13, 2015, in The International New York Times.
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Can't wait to see this one!
