Onward through the Fog

Night and fog are the main visual motifs of A Touch of Zen. Many scenes are set in near darkness, and those set in the daylight always have a little mist blowing through. The Hong Kong Smoke-Wafters Union must have gotten a lot of overtime on this arty little number.

Zen is considered to be a wu shia (martial arts) movie, but watch out: the first fight doesn't come until over an hour into the movie. That's the second thing you have to know before you start to watch. The first is that it is over 3 hours long.

The story is complicated and mysterious - it starts with a slightly goofy small town scholar who lives with his mother. He gets curious about strangers in town, the spooky abandoned palace, the beautiful woman who has moved in there. This section features him creeping around and gazing dumbly at mysterious goings-on. His observer gaze is major theme of the movie. This section plays like a ghost story.

In the next section, we discover that the mystery woman is a member of a family condemned to death by Eunuch Wei of the Western Chamber. Their spies are everywhere, and our scholar will try to help this woman survive and escape. This section is a movie of intrigue, and the fighting starts.

Here is a third thing you should know: There is no wire work in this movie, but the fights aren't really realistic. Director King Hu recreates the wire work style with only editing. For example, he does a "running across the tops of the bamboo" (imitated in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?). He does this by showing people running (shot from the waist up) and bamboo rustling (but not the tops of the bamboo). He does the magic kung fu leaps the same way - one shot of someone jumping, cut to that person high in the air, cut to same person landing. Is this effective? Personally, I would have preferred seeing more skilled fighters, with or without wires.

Finally, a group of monks who have been fading in and out of the action take center stage. I think they are great, with the final fight showing more than a touch of zen. But they are pretty much tacked on.

All in all, I'd have to say, this is not a film for action and fights. But it is a beautiful film of atmosphere and compostion. I was struck by the resemblance of this film to those of Hideo Gosha. That might not mean much to you - Gosha made some great samurai/yakuza movies with abundant atmosphere (night and fog) - derelict temples, rundown farmhouses, groves of bamboo, rocky gorges. The plots are complicated, the characters silent, desperate and deadly. Lots of action, but more style, part art film, part cut-em-up.

I wonder if they had any influence on each other - or if they had even heard of each other.