Sex, death and people flying about in the air fighting each other, A Touch of Zen is the Taiwanese martial-arts movie that reminded Hong Kong directors how to do it properly, with space used intelligently, fluid cameras, energetic edits, restrained performances, humour that isn’t just about falling flat on your face and stuntwork that’s extravagant but not ridiculous.
It’s rightly acclaimed as one of the best examples of the genre and was released in 1971 when martial arts was generally a B or even C movie affair, by King Hu, the director who changed all that.
Ang Lee borrowed heavily from it for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and there’s enough Star Wars-y feeling in it to suggest that George Lucas was also a fan. Its story – zero becomes hero (of a sort), with a feisty female blazing his trail and wise mentors offering guidance – is definitely cut from the Skywalker/Leia/Obi Wan cloth.
King Hu is really not messing about. Having decided that what wuxia needs is a more painterly eye and an artist’s sense of space, light and shade, colour and framing, he embarked on this massive epic (three hours 20 mins originally, and shown in two parts; but usually shown in the three-hour single-movie cut), taking three years to make a film designed to top Come Drink with Me and Dragon Inn, his previous wuxia triumphs.
It is the Star Wars story, really. A lowly painter Gu (Shih Chun) gradually comes to realise that at least two new arrivals in his village are not who they say they are. Hot but poor Miss Yang (Hsu Feng) and blind fortune-teller Shih (Bai Ying) in fact turn out to be battle-hardened members of a rebel alliance on the run from Mun Ta and his gang of unsavoury eunuchs, who run the country on behalf of the Emperor.
A showdown is inevitable, but by the time the appointed hour comes, the once-timid Gu is no longer recognisable. He’s been transformed not by a Yoda-like education but by his desire for the unattainable Miss Yang, who unlocks in this unambitious man a gift for military strategy and foxy gamesmanship that will turn out to prove decisive.
Visually this is a fascinating film. So much smoke, so much backlit pampas grass. But Hu’s use of light and dark more generally is also fascinating. How many directors would stage a swordfight at night in the dark? Hu does it twice. There’s also a flying, shrieking martial-arts showdown out on some crags in the blazing sunshine. And between the two in terms of visual luminosity the film’s most famous sequence, a fight in a gloomy bamboo forest, which Ang Lee redid his own way in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
In the original cut, the bamboo forest sequence ended part one and opened part two, but really it marks the end of the most exciting, propulsive chunk of the movie. The best stuff happens up front, in other words, with not one but two climactic battles bogging things down a touch in the second half. First up one in the dark, later a Sergio Leone spaghetti-western-style alternative take (if you like) – wide open spaces, dramatic close-ups, the lens zooming in and out while male choirs chant and bells toll. Think Ennio Morricone meets the Peking Opera.
Throughout, Gu, like Luke Skywalker, is more witness than protagonist. The real star of the movie is Hsu Feng and it’s she who funded the 2014 4K restoration, which is gorgeous to behold. Both the Criterion and Eureka discs use this same 4K source, so take your pick, though I think the Criterion is ahead by a whisker when it comes to features.
A Touch of Zen – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
