BV Reviews: 'House of Flying Daggers'
By Armond White, Special to AOL BlackVoices
'House of Flying Daggers' marks the commercial summit of Hong Kong action flicks crossing over into America, but it also says a lot about the influence of black popular culture on world cinema.
Like the robust yet elegant dancing in last spring’s 'Honey' and 'You Got Served,' 'House of Flying Daggers' uses martial arts choreography to show off the characters' culture and their emotions. This connection between hip-hop culture and Chinese martial arts is not accidental. It's a miracle of cultural synergy that explains why Hong Kong action movies are so popular in black urban communities.
Zhang Yimou, director of 'Flying Daggers,' also directed Hong Kong star Jet Li's worldwide hit 'Hero' (which was widely seen throughout black America via bootleg DVDs before Quentin Tarantino encouraged Miramax to officially release the movie stateside). Zhang previously directed art-house films but took on the martial arts genre as a way of communicating with the mass idea of entertainment, consequently aiming for the genre’s Western base in black moviegoers.
| Break It Down: Fans of 'Hero' are better off renting the DVD. |
Zhang replays the themes of patriotism and personal commitment found in ‘Hero’ based on the men’s visual appreciation of Mei (“No state is more cherished than a beauty like this.”). But even though ‘Flying Daggers’ is bigger and costlier, the political ideas in this film are less focused than ‘Hero.’ In fact, they are reduced to decorative visual clichés: Mei’s Echo Dance with pink sashes amidst a circle of vertical drums; and a fight in a grove where the angle of swords matches a shower of bamboo stalks. It’s all spectacular but not as emotionally expressive as ‘Hero’ and ‘You Got Served.’ This disappointment recalls the typical Hollywood failure of too much money spent to follow a formula instead of trusting inspiration.
A little background to this phenomenon is in order: ‘Hero’ had made so much money in China that Zhang was given a larger budget to expand the fight choreography that made it special and extend its storyline. Even though both ‘Hero’ and ‘ Flying Daggers’ represent home-grown creativity for Zhang, much of the films’ cultural importance comes from the impact that the chop-socky genre has had around the world, especially in the lucrative American market.
Martial arts movies from China first became a part of African-American culture in the ’70s with Bruce Lee’s ‘The Chinese Connection’ and ‘Enter the Dragon.’ This Asian crossover was the next step following the import of Japanese transistor radios and sneakers made in Hong Kong. It also coincided with the Blaxploitation movement when young black filmgoers sought out their taste for action, excitement and vengeful, thrilling fight scenes. Like it or not, while Hong Kong movies supplied thrills they also appealed to the implicit racism in Blaxploitation: non-white heroes performed in stories of revenge against oppression. Bruce Lee gave way to Jim Kelly just as the insular mythology of later Hong Kong films gave way to the Wu Tang Clan. Ethnic identification became a genuine part of the contemporary black movie culture when new-generation black filmmakers like Spike Lee only gave shout-outs to Asian directors like Japan’s Akira Kurosawa or Warrington Hudlin gave props to Hong Kong’s King Hu. Foreign language films no longer seemed foreign. Black moviegoers began to look to martial arts movies as a form of exotic wish fulfillment.
For that reason the inability of ‘Flying Daggers’ to connect visceral excitement to social feeling fails to live up to the promise of ‘Hero.’ A rescue scene where four arrows simultaneously save a blind girl from dishonor in a forest is an engineering feat, but not mythic and memorable as the forest death scene in Bertolucci’s ‘The Conformist.’ A chase through a field of wildflowers doesn’t equal the lovers in a field of wheat in Murnau’s ‘City Girl.’ Finally, Mei’s resurrection in a snowbank repeats the visual conceit until it becomes silly. In ‘Hero’ Zhang seemed to understand why audiences connect with genre as well as Charles Stone did in revitalizing the sports film in 'Mr. 3000.' But in 'Flying Daggers,' Zhang gives in to wowing the audience rather than enlightening it.
Break It Down: Fans of 'Hero' are better off renting the DVD.
Dec. 3, 2004