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ONCE
UPON A TIME IN HONG KONG: A TSUI HARK RETROSPECTIVE May 25-28, 2001 at the Anthology Film Archives |
SWORDSMAN
2 (1992)
Directed by: Ching Siu-tung Produced by: Tsui Hark Action choreography by: Ching Siu-tung, Yuen Bun, Ma Yuk-shing, Cheung Yiu-sing Starring: Jet Li, Brigitte Lin, Michelle Reis, Rosamund Kwan, Fennie Yuen, Lau Shun, Waise Lee, Chin Kar-lok, Candice Yu. 108 minutes, 35mm in Cantonese with English subtitles CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON for grown ups, SWORDSMAN II is a perfectly pitched pop opera wherein Jet Li must endure the slings and arrows (and flesh-shredding hooks, and throwing stars, and lethal needlepoint) of outrageous fortune as he seeks to retire from the martial world with his Wah Mountain brothers (and sister). Famed at swordplay, the Wah Mountain school was put through the grinder in SWORDSMAN I and now they make for the hills, hoping to leave their legendary blades behind them as they become monks. Whereas Chow Yun-fat was a great, grave hero who was noble and stoic, Jet Li is a charming drunk with a devil-may-care grin and enough skill to keep himself from being turned into a grease spot, even when loaded to the gills on scorpion wine. Sick in his heart from running people through with his sword, he's had it with the life of a legendary swordsman. 
Whereas Zhang Ziyi was a scrappy, nubile scamp who just needed to be put over someone's knee and spanked before she caused too much naughtiness, Brigitte Lin is a living deity with the power to hurl a sewing needle through an oak tree. She was previously a he, but in his quest to gain ultimate martial power he castrated himself and is slowly turning into a woman, a process he is desperately hiding from his beloved mistress, Snow. Leading the downtrodden Sun Moon Sect, last refuge of ethnic minorities, against the racial purists in the "noble" sects, Asia the Invincible wants to build a funeral pyre that consumes the world. And then she falls in love with Jet Li. Whereas Michelle Yeoh was a noble, long-suffering swordswoman whose love for Chow Yun-fat stifled her enthusiasm for living, Rosamund Kwan is a seething, whip-wielding badass who can take a ninja apart at thirty paces and whose devotion to her dad is only rivaled by her athletic lust for Swordsman Ling, and her wish that he'd look up from his bottle long enough for her to woo him. 
The producer/director team of Tsui Hark and Ching Siu-tung is famous for the CHINESE GHOST STORY series, but SWORDSMAN 2 is their greatest accomplishment. Tsui Hark brings his high polish and technical virtuosity to harness Ching Siu-tung's straight-from-the-id filmmaking and the result is a tortured, Wagnerian conflagration that unspools like a beautiful nightmare unfolding across a bleak wasteland of falling leaves, sprawling military camps, wide pampas plains, and ramshackle barracks hidden in the forests. Characters fly, bounce, spin, pull up the earth in their fury, conjure up torrential flurries of snakes, and tear down the heavens in their vanity and anger. Tsui Hark had to lure Brigitte Lin into the role of Asia the Invincible, and it would typecast her for the rest of her career. The sexual angst that tortures her as she goes from being a powerful man to an all-powerful woman is devastating. The lesson here is not that you shouldn't go against nature, but that nature is always looking for an opening, a weakness, and when it finds a one, it rushes in and destroys you. A narrative surge of adrenaline, a jolt of night-blooming beauty, and a show-stopping two hour display of martial arts by Jet Li, SWORDSMAN 2 is a viewing experience that clings to you like a ghost for the rest of your life. The paradigm shifts with this movie - with the hurt that flickers across Asia's eyes; with the charming grin of Jet Li throwing himself off a cliff; with a band of ninjas riding giant throwing stars through a misty forest; with hopes betrayed, trust broken, and power corrupting. 
Hong Kong has produced some of the wildest entertainments ever devised, spilling out of its film factories, and overflowing into the ocean where they struck out swimming for foreign ports like San Francisco, Singapore, Japan, Vietnam, Korea and the Philippines. SWORDSMAN 2 is one of the wildest. In no other time, and in no other place, could a movie this exuberant, and this profound, be made. |
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©
2001 Subway Cinema, LLC. All Rights Reserved.