A Touch of Zen (1971)

A Touch of Zen (1971)
Chinese Title: 俠女
Translation: Heroine (or "Chivalrous Woman")

 

Starring: Hsu Feng, Shih Chun, Pai Ying, Roc Tien Peng, Tsao Chien, Miao Tian, Chang Ping-Yu, Hsieh Han, Wang Shui, Roy Chiao, Wan Chung-Shan, Han Ying-Chieh, Sammo Hung
Director: King Hu
Action Director: Han Ying-Chieh, Pan Yao-Kun

 

A Touch of Zen is generally considered to be King Hu’s masterpiece and in some corners, one of the greatest martial arts films of all time. It is his most critically lauded, having won the Palme d’Or award at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, and was voted the 9th greatest Chinese-language film of all time at the 24th Hong Kong Film Awards, and 15th greatest Chinese-language film of all time at the 2011 Golden Horse Awards. Ang Lee points it out as being one of the major inspirations for his own masterpiece, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. The film also represents the second entry in both the director’s and fight choreographer’s respective Ming Dynasty “cycles[1]” and the director’s first foray into adapting Pu Song-Ling’s Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio into film.

The story is based on a short story from that anthology called “The Magnanimous Woman”. In the story, a scholar living with his mother in a haunted building takes on a new neighbor in the form of a quiet woman and her deaf mother. The latter befriends the scholar’s mother, and the scholar gives food to the poor woman and her mother. One day, the woman kills the scholar’s best friend, who turns out to be an evil fox spirit. The woman then disappears from his life forever. Using this basic premise, King Hu once again explores the corruption of the eunuchs during the Ming Dynasty who had taken too much power away from the decadent emperors.

Scholar Ku (Shih Chun, of A City Called Dragon) lives a humble existence with his mother (Chang Ping-Yu, of Eight Hundred Heroes and Seven Spirit Pagoda). Despite his myriad of talents, he refuses to take the public exam to become a government official, but instead runs a small shop writing poetry and painting portraits in hopes of saving enough to open a school. This is all to the chagrin of his mother, who’d like her son to be a bit more ambitious, make more money, find a good wife, and continue on the family line. In order to help save money, the two live in the remains of an abandoned fort, which some of the locals believe to be haunted. Ku’s life will change forever when he meets two strangers over the course of 24 hours.

The first is a polite, but suspicious wanderer by the name of Ouyang Yin (Roc Tien, of The Big Fight and Swordsman of All Swordsmen). Ouyang shows up at Ku’s shop asking for a portrait, but also inquiring into the backgrounds of some of the town’s newer residents. At the same time, a young woman named Miss Yang (Hsu Feng, of To Kill With Intrigue and Chase Step by Step) has moved into the fort, setting up shop as a weaver. Ku’s mother thinks that Miss Yang would make the perfect wife for her son, although Yang refuses the proposal. Despite his initial friendship with Ouyang, when Ku discovers that his new friend is involved in a deadly game of cat and mouse with Miss Yang, who’s the daughter of a deposed general, he gravitates toward Miss Yang and her retainers. When the high official who ordered the arrest and torture of Yang’s father arrives in town, Scholar Ku will use his extensive scholarly knowlege—including military philosophy and history—to help the underdogs find justice.

Obviously, this is a three-hour film we’re talking about, so the story is far more complex than my short synopsis suggests. And director King Hu takes his sweet time in developing the story, in such a way that it’s almost an hour into the movie before we get our first swordfight. King Hu gives us ample time to get to know both Scholar Ku and his mother, not to mention develop a rapport between Ku and Ouyang, before allowing the external conflict to unroll. Cinematographer Hua Hui-Ying, who also filmed King Hu’s Dragon Inn, gives us long shots of the haunted fort where Ku lives, the countryside of Southern China, and the forests—both bamboo and evergreen—where the some of the longer fights take place. We have ample time to soak in the surroundings before a single sword is drawn.

For a film so deliberately paced, it’s a testament to King’s skills as an artist that the movie doesn’t feel as long as it is, at least for the first 150 minutes. Where the film really loses its footing, and thus doesn’t quite reach that eschelon of “greatest martial arts films of all time” is in the last half hour. The bad guys vanquished and Yang having avenged her family, we go into a lengthy sequence in which Miss Yang disappears and Ku goes looking for her. That’s fine. This leads into the climax, in which a new set of villains appears and scuffles with our heroine and her cohorts, including a group of Shaolin monks. It ends with a pseudo-religious kung fu fight between the Abbot (Roy Chiao) and the head guard (Han Ying-Chieh) that goes on for nearly 20 minutes before reaching a final Zen conclusion.

From a storytelling perspective, introducing new villains so late in the game is dangerous territory, as it robs the viewer of the emotional investment of watching the heroes put their lives on the line for something they believe in. By this time in the film, the heroes have already earned that victory. Why do we want to keep watching these people fight? They’ve already gotten what they want. Yes, it would make sense that the government would want to seek justice against these “rebels”, but that’s another for another film. And considering that the local officials were helping the good guys and the bad guys were all killed, how would higher-ups discover that Scholar Ku was involved? Those thirty minutes bring up more questions than they answer. And whatever King Hu wanted to say about Buddhism in a film whose original title is “Heroine”, or “Chivalrous Lady”, feels tacked on when being dealt with through the conflict of two groups of supporting characters, one of which who had only been introduced minutes before.

It’s a shame about the finale that feels removed from the rest of the movie leading up to it, because all of the technical and artistic aspects of the film are excellent. Han Ying-Chieh is back as the head action director, with help from Pan Yao-Kun, who had worked on A City Called Dragon (1969), another arthouse swordplay film. The emphasis of the action is swordplay, and once more, Han Ying-Chieh seems to be channeling Japanese samurai films through a Peking Opera lens, although his work is a lot more accomplished here than it was in Dragon Inn. Most people talk about the infamous bamboo forest fight and how it inspired so many films after it. It’s definitely a well-photographed fight, although I like the big battle at the fort more. Unlike The Heroic Ones, where the generals were super-powered kung fu killing machines, this film grounds our protagonists and establishes quickly that the higher up the official is, the better his fighting skill is. And since they come accompanied by hundreds of soldiers, taking them head on is not going to be an option. And thus Scholar Ku becomes a military strategist, combining his years of reading the Classics with his intimate knowledge of the surrounding area. The way he and the others break down the soldiers’ nerves before the battle proper starts is genius and might have inspired a similar scene in Monsters University. The final fights are all well-choreographed, and look for a 19-year-old Sammo Hung as Han Ying’s bodyguard.

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[1] - The first film would be Dragon Inn (1967), which they worked on together. The third film differs between the two: for King Hu it was The Valiant Ones (1975) and for Han Ying-Chieh it was a pentalogy, the other films being Heroes in the Late Ming Dynasty (1975), The Last Battle of Yang Chao (1976) and Dynasty (1977).