Zhang Yimou

A breath-taking forest, a mixture of sunlight and nature filtering greenly through the bamboo trees. The camera pans through the trees until it finds a solitary figure, alone in a clearing. Somewhere far off, a bird can be heard calling out. The camera jumps to a close up of a young woman, sitting down and taking a drink from a water pouch. The camera snaps to the tree tops, where a few leaves flutter to the ground, crackling as they go. We flash back to Mei. She looks up, listening for the sound of a sword. More leaves fall as the tree tops sway. She jumps up, only to be caught by two swordsmen from the House of Flying Daggers, and so begins the bamboo forest fight scene.

Or perhaps the chess house is a better place to start. The dark, monotonous colours reflect the chess-board, clashing, but soft at the same time. A rounded white pebble is scooped from a row and placed on a board. The narrator begins. The camera pans upwards to give us a glimpse of Nameless. The narrator stops speaking, and the sound of dripping water takes his place. Other visitors of the chess house scurry away, perhaps to seek shelter from the rain, or perhaps to avoid the oncoming battle. We are given a close-up of Nameless’ face as he begins talking. The camera cuts between him and his opponent. Nameless, dressed in an orange traveling outfit, sticks out like a sore thumb, yet the colour of his clothes are still muted in accordance with the surroundings.

No? Maybe you would prefer the tea-house. A stunning young woman with porcelain skin, blood red lips and wide, almost startled eyes is led to the client. She is wrapped in a dark-blue silk kimono, decorated with gold and turquoise embroidery. The only sound is that of Mei’s headdress jingling. Although the background is so alive with colour, she stands out like a rose amongst daisies. Her client cuts the top fastening, causing her to gulp, although she says nothing, and lets it hang on her dress. He smirks, and continues to cut until the kimono falls open, revealing an under outfit just as stunning as before. The sleeves are impossibly long, and she grasps frantically at them, trying to cover herself while the young man laughs, snatching one and pulling her over to him.

The way in which Zhang Yimou tells his stories is one to be admired. Whilst his films fall under the Wuxia category, he drapes his characters in histories and complications so thick that the action is more of an afterthought added to create physical tension within his film. It is, in fact, unneeded when compared with the outstanding colours he uses. Zhang Yimou was born on November 14th, 1951, in the Xi’an Shaanxi Province of China. As a child, he suffered prejudice because of his family’s connection with the Nationalist party. His road to cinematography and directing was a long, difficult one. At one time during the Cultural Revolution, he had to sell his blood for five months to be able to buy his first camera. Once he graduated from the Beijing Film School (after much hard work) he began working with other graduates from the school. Some of his earliest collaborations were Yellow Earth and One and Eight.

He has directed seventeen films to date, eight of which have either been nominated for, or have won different awards. His directorial debut, Red Sorghum, starred actress Gong Li, and won a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. One of the best things he manages to carry off is the creation of a love story where the over-elaborate action does not dominate the film, despite its’ label. It’s his well-thought cast choices that manage to convince the audience that his characters are in love. We believe, in House of Flying Daggers, that Mei and Jin are madly in love after only three days because the director wants us to.

While it may be an unrealistic time-span for the couple to share the bond they have, we still believe it to be true. Maybe this is because of the situation created by the director, maybe it is because of their surroundings, and how their love mirrors it. Or maybe it is because the director has drawn us in so fast that we are totally unable to imagine another outcome.

He has a very unique style in the way that he shoots his films: using the obscure angles that keep the viewer intrigued, placing the actors to the left or right instead of the centre, and the way he interprets colours and seasons. In House of Flying Daggers, for example, the film is set over a period of three days, and yet he manages to include all four seasons into it.

His strange use of camera angles keep the viewer watching, even if they do not like the film style, simply because we want to know who is riding that horse, unseen by Mei, who is sat in a clearing, looking a little lost. We want to know if Nameless will murder the king of Qin. We want to know what Mei and Jin’s fate is, simply because we have to know.

Zhang Yimou is a director who ranks alongside Tim Burton, Steven Spielberg, Guillermo Del Toro and Peter Jackson. Although these five are wildly different in their final products, their styles are all very similar, the attention they pay to detail, and the way they tell their stories are fabulous. Others criticise these men for being too over-the-top, too different, and too over-produced. Yimou is unrealistic, they say, no doubt thinking of the way his actors literally fly across the screen. He is not afraid to show us blood, but he manages to carry it off in an artful way. Technically, he doesn’t show us sex: instead, he gives us glimpses of flesh, whilst still maintaining a high level of respect.

Yimou’s most obvious follower would be Quentin Tarantino who is even less blood-shy, allowing everything on screen to be soaked in red, in Kill Bill 1, for example. But again, Tarantino possesses the ability to make violence artful. It is rare that you see it, but when you do, there is the obvious link between the two directors. There are more links between them than is seen at first glance. The way Tarantino unfolds the story is again incredibly similar to Yimou in that he does not simply go from A to B, he goes from A to F with E, C, G and D all mixed up somewhere along the line. And yet the story still makes sense to us, the viewers.

There is something inspiring about the way these two people create their films, the way they give us their impressions of what life is like, of the way people find, and lose, love, of what sacrifice feels like and what it is like to survive. The way they give us their vision is so spectacular that it leaves you stunned afterwards is a true gift, and Zhang Yimou twists it into his films brilliantly.