All This Useless Beauty

Over the weekend I went to see Hero, the new film from the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon stable, and which gratuitously bears the name of Quentin Tarantino on the posters. The hype about his film indicated that it was one of the most beautiful films ever made, bringing an art-house aesthetic into action cinema.

So, should you ignore the words of Public Enemy and believe the hype? Well, yes and no. First things first: this film looks stunning, its use of colour and special effects are magical, and I kept thinking that this is what the new Star Wars films really, really should have been like.

Normally I’d get to accuse a film that looks this good of being completely hollow. Hero manages to side step this somewhat by shamelessly borrowing a trick from Kurosawa’s Rashomon - the unfolding of the narrative by multiple versions of events, some of which are not true. This also has the effect of making two of the film’s characters much more three-dimensional and effective than would normally be the case. For all that, there’s still something quite sterile about Hero. Maybe it’s the art-house aesthetic. Maybe it's the complete lack of a sense of humour (although the line "You did not come here for the calligraphy" had me in stitches). Maybe it’s the fact that a subtitled film tends to separate the viewer from the emotions being expressed by the actors. Anyway, that’s how I felt.

Now comes the controversial bit. I understand that there’s been a bit off a fuss over Hero in certain quarters, with some critics accusing the film of having a Fascist outlook. That isn’t really true: Fascism exposes the view that a constant state of war is a desirable thing, as it “ennobles” the participants and prevents them from “degenerating”. Hero suggests that war is a step on the path to peace. Rather than being Fascist, Hero is a piece of Chinese nationalist propaganda, with all that that entails. The Fascist tag probably comes from the fact that the director has almost certainly seen, and borrowed from, Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will.

The moral problem of Hero is that it falls back on the old chestnut of fighting for peace. The king who we are in the end supposed to see as a hero is going to slaughter his way to domination over his enemies, creating a strong unified state and therefore peace (the sound you can hear in the background is George W. Bush fans having a collective orgasm). A caption at the end of the film relates that the king achieved this and then built the Great Wall in order to “protect the Chinese people” (the sound you can hear in the background is Ariel Sharon fans having a collective orgasm). China then enjoyed peace, harmony, and complete respect for human rights until the present day. Didn’t it?

So the real question is, should you go and see Hero. The answer is yes, provided you can overlook some fairly dubious politics. Hell, I think you should go and see it just for The Bit With All The Leaves.