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+---- Thread: A Touch of Zen (1971) by King Hu (/showthread.php?tid=3942)
A Touch of Zen (1971) by King Hu - cranefly - 12-13-2016
Sometimes I pass up watching old martial arts movies because I think I've already seen then. Not surprising, considering the hundreds of them I have seen. That's where things stood for years with A Touch of Zen, directed by King Hu. But on a whim the other night I rented the film, carefully threaded it into my 35mm projector, and took aim at the big white wall I recently erected in our back yard in honor of our illustrious soon-to-be leader of the free world.
My bad. No, I hadn't seen this before.
To properly speak of this film, I need to dip into cinema history, all the way back to the early pioneers, and in particular to that greatest of upstarts, Napoleon Bonaparte. Early in his career he made a lot of very bankable films, was well respected by his peers and had a huge audience following. But then he got it in his head to make an epic film, one that would address the human condition in every conceivable way. It was a monumental undertaking taking some eight years to shoot and featuring some of the day's brightest stars. But when it finally hit the theaters in 1815, Waterloo got a cool reception. In fact, it totally bombed. Suddenly the studios wouldn't work with him, or if they did, it was on a miniscule budget, and with a producer overseeing his every shot. Thus did a marvelous career get throttled at its very peak by one overindulgent film.
This has happened to other film directors. To Sergio Leone with his epic Once Upon a Time in the West (now regarded a masterpiece, but it bombed at the box office and all but ended his career), Adolf Hitler's WWII (bombed on release, the negative destroyed, but surviving fragments have reached cult status and now single-handedly support the History Channel), Michael Powell's The Red Shoes (after it bombed, studios put their collective heads together and decided from now on they would choose the projects their directors would make), Branded to Kill by Seijun Suzuki, now considered a masterpiece, but it bombed so badly that Suzuki was blacklisted by all Japanese studios for 20 years.
Back to the present.
When A Touch of Zen started playing on my wall, I had two expectations: 1) the movie would end in a freeze-frame of a death-punch; 2) the movie would likely open with a fight scene. What I didn't expect was ten minutes of beautiful landscapes and a few peasant buildings -- no humans -- all exquisitely shot. This was topnotch cinematography, each scene perfectly composed, the camera movements flawless. There was no way I'd seen this movie before, and I had no idea what kind of movie this was. Finally King Hu starts introducing characters in a village square, and the camerawork becomes even more complex and masterful; and then son of a gun if we're not on a crane going up and about to follow a growing intrigue.
What the hey! What am I watching? Well, as it turns out, I'm watching King Hu's Waterloo. King Hu had previously directed Come Drink with Me (1966) and Dragon Gate Inn (1967), both phenomenally successful. So a Taiwanese studio, Union Film, handed King Hu a thousand taels of gold and said, make a film, any film, just make it, thinking they'd make a million taels of gold on the investment. So King Hu embarked on A Touch of Zen (1971), a labor of love that took 4 years to shoot and has a running time of three hours, which bombed at the box office, and thereafter studios didn't trust him, wouldn't touch him, or if they did, they kept him on a very short leash and with a very tight budget.
It's hard to categorize this film. It contains a fair amount of martial arts, but then again it doesn't. There are zen-like aspects to the movie in a non-zen way. And it's a mystery. No, I mean it's a horror movie. Well, it's a puzzle box of a film, a hodgepodge of genres all wondrously interlocked.
A few have called the movie slow-moving. But I found the slow scenes very suspenseful. King Hu is a master of suspense. There is always some intrigue afoot, and you can see the characters struggling to figure out what's going on.
A wonderful film to have saved until this point in my life.
Hu? - Drunk Monk - 12-14-2016
I remember seeing this in some art house (the one in Paly maybe?) when I was much younger (college?) and thinking wth? They just restored it and I was thinking I'd watch it again to see if it made more sense to me now but it seemed like such a commitment, something I'd really have to be in the mood for, and I just wasn't getting in that mood.
I'd rather watch Ninja 3.
RE: A Touch of Zen (1971) by King Hu - Drunk Monk - 10-05-2022
I started watching this again on Criterion last night and cf nails it when he dubs it Hu's Waterloo. I totally agree with cf's comments on cinematography and suspense, and know that it is critically hailed as one of Hu's masterpieces (Criterion, say no more, right?) but man, get the feckin sword fights, will ya?
I fell asleep about an hour in.
Ok, alright, in all fairness, I was pretty exhausted last night and had taken my notrip (which is extremely sedating) and maybe a shot or two of of Tullamore Dew, and maybe an edible gummy leftover from Jazz fest, but omg, what a snooze fest.
I'll try to get back up on this horse later, maybe after I've had some coffee...
RE: A Touch of Zen (1971) by King Hu - Drunk Monk - 10-18-2022
Okay, alright... I take back what I said. I was viewing this totally wrong. I was just watching the fight scenes, which are ok as they escalate, when I should've been watching this for the scenery. What an exquisitely beautiful film. The panoramic natural settings, the use of natural and stationary light, the gratuitous smoke or fog or vapor or whatever is wafting through everything, the color usage and composition of the frames - genius. And to think this is all without effects (beyond that smoke and some trapolines) - some of the shots are sheer mastery of filmmaking.
The finale swordfights are good fun.
I get why this is Criterion. I blame my earlier reaction to too much drugs and exhaustion.
RE: A Touch of Zen (1971) by King Hu - Greg - 10-19-2022
So, this is a Criterion film and we have a Criterion section and yet you post it here, Florida Man?
RE: A Touch of Zen (1971) by King Hu - Drunk Monk - 10-19-2022
I'm just following up on cf's original post. He did that before there was a Criterion forum.
I suppose someone should move this thread...
RE: A Touch of Zen (1971) by King Hu - Greg - 10-19-2022
Sure. Blame the other guy.
RE: A Touch of Zen (1971) by King Hu - Drunk Monk - 10-19-2022
Not blaming the other guy.
Blaming time. It’s like those Greek philosophers who were just outside hell because they lived before Christ in Dante’s inferno.
Only it’s here on D00M