Cinema Tuesdays Review

House of Flying Daggers
By Nathan Cone

Director Zhang Yimou’s previous film, “Hero,” was nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign Film, and raked in over $53 million dollars at the box office. In contrast, his most recent martial arts based film, “House of Flying Daggers,” earned roughly a fifth of that amount, and was only nominated at the Oscars for its cinematography, despite a lavish ad campaign in Variety from Sony Pictures Classics. Perhaps it was the film’s lack of an international superstar like Jet Li, or the romantic angle in the film that caused it to fail to reach the same wide audience as “Hero.” But “House of Flying Daggers” deserves a second life on home video, and the recently released DVD of the title will hopefully gain some new fans for the film.

“House of Flying Daggers” is an old-fashioned story at heart, but its gorgeous cinematography and graceful fight sequences that seem more like dance make it a dazzling experience. Ziyi Zhang, star of “Hero” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” plays Mei, a blind girl and member of a rebel army, who is freed from prison by a dashing stranger (Takeshi Kaneshiro) sent by the establishment to infiltrate Mei’s rebel army, the Flying Daggers.

To reveal much more of the plot would be to give away some of its surprises, but it would not be spoiling much to say that the dashing stranger and Mei’s journey across the countryside to meet up with the other members of the Flying Daggers is fraught with peril, and that the two eventually develop feelings for one another.

Earlier, I compared the fight sequences in “Flying Daggers” to dance, but early on in the film, there is a pure dance sequence set in a brothel that is an aural and visual masterpiece. As the blind girl Mei stands in the middle of a room full of drums, a military officer flicks beans at them and challenges her to mimic him. She does so by flinging her elongated sleeves at the drums. Listening on surround sound speakers is a joy, as the thrums of the drums travel around the front and back portions of the listening space.

Also a pleasure to listen to is the film’s score by Shigeru Umebayashi, featuring violinist Itzhak Perlman and soprano Kathleen Battle. Less rhythmic than Tan Dun’s score for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” Umebayashi’s music sounds more traditionally romantic, and Perlman’s violin sings throughout the film, matched by Battle’s soprano over the closing credits.

Visually, The DVD of “Flying Daggers” seems like it’s not as good as it could be. In the theater, the film looked spectacular on screen, full of vibrant colors and rich detail. On this DVD, I noticed some areas of the background, such as crowds, in one scene, that lacked definition, and seemed to shimmer.

The DVD includes several extras, including a commentary by the director and actress Ziyi Zhang that is in Chinese with subtitles! Pretty cool. Also included are brief glimpses of the costume designer’s sketches for the film, a “making of” featurette, and a storyboard-to-film sequence that actually works well. A music video featuring Kathleen Battle singing the film’s theme is nice to listen to, but suffers from a poor video source, and a there’s a short piece about the special effects used in the film that is mildly interesting, but features no narration whatsoever, and so the viewer is left with nothing but visual cues as to “how they did that.”

It’s too bad that “House of Flying Daggers” was shut out at the Oscars this year. Its art direction and score especially deserved to be nominated. A more vibrant looking DVD would have served the film even better, but the current release is more than respectable, especially because of its audio track. This exciting and romantic film deserves to be seen -- and heard -- by new audiences, be they martial arts fans or not.

5/4/05

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