The director Zhang Yimou achieved two significant milestones in 2004. The first was to see his martial arts masterpiece, Hero, finally released in the United States after a three-year delay. Opening last August at the top of the U.S. box office, the film's breathtaking grandeur proved both critically and commercially successful, vaulting the director of 90's art house hits like Raise The Red Lantern and Ju Do onto Hollywood’s A-List.

As stunning as that accomplishment (and that film) is, it is eclipsed by his second milestone of the year: HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, a mind-blowing expansion of the themes, styles, and ideas that won Hero such acclaim. With a significantly more streamlined tale of love, passion, and vengeance, Zhang Yimou's explosive imagination threatens to burst the seams of the movie screen. Told with operatic vibrancy and epic splendor, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS is sublime, luscious filmmaking: exquisitely composed, staggeringly designed, with cinematography that may be the most sumptuous ever committed to celluloid. As surprising as it may seem, Yimou's second knockout punch of 2004 has surpassed his first, making HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS the most visually dazzling film of the year.

Yimou's universe is one that verges on sensory overload; his color palette revels in the colors of nature, whether it is golden autumnal leaves, striking green bamboo, snow-white birch, or the ocean blue ribbons of the Peony Pavilion. The sensory experience reaches beyond color, however: sound editor Steve Burgess makes the most of every moment, rustling rows of beads and underscoring whispers of fabric flowing through air. Minimalists may scoff, but in the hyper-electric world of kung fu and wuxia, Yimou's attention to viscerality is perfectly tuned; suddenly, films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Kill Bill seem anemic by comparison. To be fair to the naysayers, it is over-the-top -- but gloriously so, and in such a way as to not negate the narrative's dramatic power. HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS revels in the mysticism and operatic romanticism of myth, but never forgets its primary task...to entertain its audience through succulent fantasy.

There is a marvelous story of love betrayed at the core of Yimou's magnum opus, a love triangle that never loses its focus inside Yimou's visual hurricane. Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) and Leo (Andy Lau) are police guards in ninth century China, near the fall of the Tang Dynasty. Having captured a blind girl, Mei (Zhang Ziyi) -- who they suspect is a member of the mysterious revolutionary group named The House of Flying Daggers -- Leo devises a plan to disguise Jin as a freedom fighter who helps Mei escape...and then follows her to the ringleaders. Of course, no one expected romance to develop between Jin and Mei...least of all the two of them, on opposite sides of an unrelenting war. As passion burns and the battle looms, Yimou balances romance and action with delicate precision, stripping away the secrets, layer upon layer, of deceit and intrigue. The tale's playful sense of humor, tragic love, and jaw-dropping martial arts sequences co-exist in rapturous harmony, culminating in a snowbound battle that may literally take your breath away.

The heroic and textured performances of Kaneshiro, Lau, and Ziyi root HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS firmly to the dramatic narrative, keeping the visual pyrotechnics from drifting too far afield. As Jin, Kaneshiro again shows the dynamic leading-man charm that first came to the attention of international audiences in Wong Kar-Wai's Chunking Express and Fallen Angels. Kaneshiro seems to intuitively understand the larger canvas that Yimou plays upon, and sizes his performance proportionally -- swoony romantic one minute, hard-edged warrior the next. Lau, who made an enormous impression in the award-winning Internal Affairs, endows Leo with cold-as-steel crispness that slowly cracks apart as Leo's true nature is revealed. The extraordinarily entertaining Ziyi (Rush Hour 2, Crouching Tiger) is revelatory as the blind courtesan with more secrets than one can count.

Perhaps the greatest revelation in HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS is Xiaoding Zhao, who makes the year's most impressive debut...and is never seen onscreen. Zhao's cinematography features an exemplary understanding color and composition that rivals the greats of this generation like Christopher Doyle and John Toll. Zhao is a new addition to Yimou's Hero creative team (including returning screenwriters Feng Li and Bin Wang, production designer Tingxiao Huo, and costumer Emi Wada), all of whom have made enormous creative leaps. The score, by Shigeru Umebayashi (In The Mood For Love), is delightful, with motifs that knowingly reference Nina Rota's themes for The Godfather and Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet. When soprano Kathleen Battle joins in to sing the final chorus, one feels as if the film's barely-concealed operatic undertones have finally come to fruition.

Looking back over the last few paragraphs, one can see I've poured buckets of hyperbole on this film's shoulders; in my defense, to do so is a reflection of HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, which encourages passionate response in its characters (and its audiences). Such flights of fancy are not for everyone, of course; if you're big into gritty realism, for instance, you should save yourself the headache. But for anyone who longs for waking dreams, Yimou has given you one. Go, indulge, and enjoy.

-- Gabriel Shanks

Review text copyright © 2004 Mixed Reviews & the author. All rights reserved. Reproduction of text in whole or in part in any form or in any medium without express written permission of Mixed Reviews or the author is prohibited.

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