THE ORIGINAL SWORDSMAN
(Siren/Chinatown Video)
Reviewed by Jonathan
Marshall
Director King Hu's 'Original' Swordsman (so-retitled because
Chinatown Video have previously released Swordsman 2 as Swordsman) is a pleasant variant on producer
Tsui Hark's swords'n'sorcery flics. Much of the film is shot outside on location, and even where a typical dark, creaky barn-like house is the setting, the lighting moves away from the derivative use of blues, reds and white, to mix in a more colorful, golden glow to the cinematography than say
Chinese Ghost Story or even
The Bride With White Hair.
Similarly, the score includes a more than usually successful combination of traditional Chinese folk instrumentation - with its twangy strings - and cheesy, synth-ed up pop versions of the same, creating a strange, fascinating use of the theme song (often a feature of
Hark's best work). A scene in which two aging clan leaders pass on a song to the younger characters in a moment of happy camaraderie plucked from a hiatus in the violence recurs several times, but there is no pretence at actual miming. Instead, the score acts as a hyperbolic, self-consciously overlaid metaphor for the kind of sociability which the film advocates, but which circumstances in the world thwart.
In this sense, Swordsman follows themes common to the genre and movies like
Bride With White Hair or Zu Warriors. The world is constructed as a cruel place of betrayals, unnecessary clannish divisions and empty, vaunting ambition which leads to endless misery; where honesty of heart and intention is rare.
Swordsman plays heavily on the pathos of such a depressing, 'post-Confucian' metaphysics, but it is not a deep, or even particularly serious film. The early part especially is characterised by a breezy sense of the comic, with
Sam Hui's delightful, easy-going swordsman, complications arising from cross-dressing, exotic mountain tribes-people with wacky attack-styles, and a
manically nasty head-eunuch. Swordsman is therefore a fun romp, as well as a piece of gentle moralism.
Swordsman is not as stylish as white-hot classics like
Wicked City (Taiwan) or Saviour of the Soul, or but it is easily comparable to
Jet Li's less exalted films, and is really more successful on its own modest terms than the rather overblown pretentiousness of the
Once Upon a Time in China
series. Highly recommended.
© 2000 Jonathan Marshall
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