WARNING: This is a spoiler. If you wanted to be surprised, don’t read this!!!
I went to see the much hyped about movie, The Banquet, last Sunday (October 21). And boy! Am I in for a treat! The movie is quite spectacular and is one of the best movies I’ve seen for the year and probably one on my list of the best movie of all times.
The Historical Background
The backdrop of the story is set during the Five Dynasty and Ten Kingdom Period in China (The civil war period sandwich between the Tang dynasty and the Sung dynasty). Few actually appreciate the significance of this historical period to the overall movie theme. The Five Dynasty period is a time when anarchy prevailed as a result of warlordism and civil war. In just a span of 70 or more years, 5 dynasties rise and fall in rapid succession. In these turbulent times, the Emperors are mere hostages to their aspiring generals while generals are hostage to their greedy and unruly soldiers. As a result, Emperors rarely died peacefully. Most of them died by assassinations and in rebellions. Because of the weakened state of the central authorities, local potentates came to control local affairs and thus rampant corruption ensued. And because of the frequent changes in regime, political survival and expediency became the norm and principles became an oddity. Morality is no more than a piece of paper and degeneracy sets in all levels of society. It is in this sad state of affairs that we find our heroes.
The Storyline
The movie begins with the Empress Wan entering the funeral chamber of the recently deceased Emperor, her husband. She was surprised to discover her brother – in – law (the late emperor’s brother) dressed in the armor of the emperor. Without much saying, she realized that the brother – in – law has in fact seize the imperial throne and he offered the Empress a choice, to be his consort or die. The Empress quite naturally spurned his indecent offer in a rather angry fashion but somehow relented in the end (Or did she?). With one potential opposition (the empress) removed, the brother – in – law sent out his royal bodyguard to assassinate the true heir of the throne unknowingly that the Empress Wan has also sent out her own trusted bodyguard to protect the true heir. The Prince – heir oblivious to the events outside his own reclusive world was actually sulking and was in the midst of doing a traditional play, The Song of the Yueh Women (he was actually more an artist than a prince). The Song is about a loner’s lament of unrequited love. While he was at it, the Empress’s bodyguards came and informed him of the news. Much afterwards, the assassins came and began one of most the visually spectacular sword fighting that I’ve seen. The fight was quite bloody. Everyone in the Prince’s entourage including the Empress’ bodyguard’s died fighting including the person posing as the Prince. The Prince only manages to survive because he gave his performance mask to his protector and hide underwater in the artificial lake. After surviving the massacre, he sets out to his home, the imperial palace and only to discover that his childhood love, his one and only, his step mother, the Empress Wan was in the midst of preparing to marry his uncle, the usurper, the murderer of his father, the new Emperor. The Prince was not just simply aggrieved but also beseech with anger and harbors vengeance. He visits his step – mother in the night ostensibly to confront her but also partly due to his longing to see his beloved. There happened one of the most awkward scenes. A man kneeling before the love of his life who is 4 years his junior and calling her mother. So close to his true love yet so far away. The Empress was equally hurt in such display of traditional Confucian obedience and filial piety for she still loved the Prince but couldn’t do so because she was technically his “mother” and tradition dictates that she acts accordingly. After that rather awkward confrontation came the idle pleasant exchange on their recent lives (nothing happened since both are strictly proper). Unknown to the two, the new Emperor, the usurper was about to enter the chamber when he overheard the idle murmur of the two. At first, he was surprised that his nephew, the true heir is alive but was no sooner overcome with jealousy. Even so, he kept his silence as his jealousy raged within him. How could she (his former sister – in – law and now his consort) do this to him? He (the new Emperor) could have given her everything she wanted. She was after all the object of his love (or lust depending on one’s view). Silently, he walks away and left the two alone. Amazingly, the Emperor kept his silence about the discovery even to his love, the Empress but grew increasingly distraught that she didn’t reveal the Prince’s survival to him until finally he couldn’t take it anymore and reveal what he knows to the Empress during a polo match (polo was actually invented in China during the Tang dynasty as an aristocratic sport). The Prince on the other hand was hiding in the house of his fiancé, the lady Ching, who was the daughter of a powerful minister, Yin. Minister Yin was an old but ambitious courtier as well as an astute politician, always going the way where the wind breezes. Lady Ching’s brother was a military governor of an important strategic province bordering the Khitans. Lady Ching was very much in love with the Prince so much so that she purportedly could communicate with her beau in her dreams (a sign of mental instability I would say). She would have given him everything even though she knew that he didn’t love her. Upon the discovery, the Emperor summoned the Prince for an audience and right then and there, he commanded the Prince to perform a swordplay with his royal guards since the Prince was considered the foremost swordsman in the realm, second only after the deceased emperor. The swordplay was to be played out using wooden swords to prevent injury and accidents but in the middle of the fighting, one of the guards changed his wooden sword for real thing and began carrying out the assassination attempt right in front of the Emperor who is pretending to have fallen asleep (and thereby claim innocence and be absolved of any guilt). The plot almost succeeded had it not been intervened and saved by the Empress who herself was an excellent swordsman. The emperor awoke and dismisses both the empress and the Prince. He silently looks at the guards and without warning kills the guard responsible for the foiled assassination. After that foiled assassination, the Prince became convinced that his uncle is behind the murder of his father and he sought out revenge. He visited an alchemist for a strongest poison known to man. However, he wasn’t convinced that the poison was strong but when he pressed the alchemist for another poison. He was stunned to realize that there is nothing more poisonous than a human heart. With that realization, he gave up revenge. On the day of the coronation, the new Emperor sent out for the Prince to entertain the imperial host with swordplays with the new Emperor’s bodyguards but the Prince refuses and instead, performs a play, which he wrote. The play tells the story of two brothers, one rich and the other poor. The rich brother loved and trusted his poor and evil younger brother but the latter had the former murdered through poison. The play was an indirect reference to the usurpation and murder by the new Emperor. The Emperor though clam was shaken by the knowledge of his nephew’s discovery and he immediately sent the Prince to exile as hostage to the Khitans. En route to the Khitans, the bodyguard – escorts attempted to murder the Prince but the Prince was saved by Lady Ching’s brother. It happened that Lady Ching volunteered to accompany the Prince to his exile but this offer offended the jealous Empress Wan that she had Lady Ching arrested and tortured. Using Lady Ching as hostage, the Empress came to an understanding with Minister Yin and plotted with Yin to save the Prince (through Yin’s son or Lady Ching’s brother) and eliminate the new Emperor via assassination. No sooner that the plot was hatch, Minister Yin plotted a coup within a coup. Only this time, Minister Yin intends to remove the Empress after the assassination of the new Emperor and to usurp the throne for himself. Meanwhile, the Empress is also scouting for poison and came upon the same alchemist that the Prince sought. Like the Prince, she asked whether or not there is a much more poisonous substance than the one she is holding and to which she also received the same reply, “the human heart”. However, unlike the soft – hearted Prince, she appeared unperturbed by the revelation and “rewarded” the alchemist with poison in order to keep him silent (a vile woman indeed). There afterwards she began to orchestrates events and on the hundredth day of her marriage to her brother – in – law, she beseech the Emperor to throw a feast and the Emperor obliged and ordered a banquet to be served in her honor that night. During the banquet, the Empress quietly slipped in the poison to the Emperor’s cup and proposes a toss. The Emperor was about to drink from the poisoned cup when all the sudden a troop of actors appeared led by Lady Ching. Lady Ching offered to stage a play, The Song of the Yueh Women to entertain the Emperor. The Emperor puzzled but eventually allowed and he offered as a gesture to Lady Ching, his poisoned cup (he has no knowledge about it). The Lady Ching drank the wine to the shock of his father, Minister Yin and his brother, who both are privy to the assassination plot. There followed one of the most harrowing scene in the movie, that of a broken hearted, dying woman slowly dancing and singing a heart wrenching song till her demise in the arms of the Prince, who happens to be the masked actor behind her. In the end, the Prince professes his love for the poor Lady Ching but everything is too late. Lady Ching’s brother literally flew out of his seat and snatched his sister away from the Prince’s embrace and the Prince so enraged by the tragedies that befell him, let out his sword and aimed towards the Emperor, only to be stopped by the royal bodyguards. Whilst the battle was raging, the Emperor though calm was visibly stunned by the knowledge of the poison and the attempt to assassinate him and most importantly, by the person he most loved and that person is none other than the Empress Wan. In a twist nobody expected, he called off the guards and confronted the Prince. There he wailed against fate and most likely disillusioned by the betrayal, he took the cup of poisoned wine and drank it to the last drop and slowly, the Emperor walked up to his throne while removing his crown and collapsed and died in the bosom of his wife, the Empress. The Empress immediately proclaimed the Prince as the new Emperor but was rejected by the Prince. While the commotion is on going, an enraged Lady Ching’s brother vented his ire on the scheming Empress. He pulled out a poison dagger and aimed at the Empress’ neck but was stopped by the Prince, who was in turn fatally wounded (the Empress killed Lady Ching’s brother). The Prince died immediately in the arms of his wailing beloved………..mother………… Minister Yin for in his part of the complicity of the attempted assassination of the Empress was exiled to a distant colony. With all opposition removed, Empress Wan assumed the throne but didn’t live long to enjoy her new – found power. She was murdered in the end.
The story sounded so much like Shakespeare’s Hamlet (or was it Othello?). In fact, if Shakespeare were born a Chinese, he would have probably written something like this. This is one tragedy after a tragedy and a tragedy within a tragedy. It is a tragedy after a tragedy because one could see in the latter part how one character after another fell, burned by their own doings. It is a tragedy within a tragedy because though the characters faced their individual tragedies, the greatest tragedy is that as humans, we are mere animals of our passion and our ambition and fate came along and played our passions and our ambitions and turned us into victims of our own deeds. It makes me wonder though if we are just merely stupid or fate was being cruel.
Direction, Cinematography, and Martial Arts Play
The film is directed by Feng Xiao Kang. One thing I could say about the movie is that it is not your traditional Chinese martial arts – imperial age drama. The armors worn by the imperial guards reminded me of the Sauron’s dragon flying – minions in the Lord of the Rings movie. In fact, though the architecture is definitely Chinese, the black and white colored backdrop and the unconventional designs readily gives an impression that this is more of a Medieval European drama (and hence, the seeming reference to Shakespeare) rather than a Medieval Chinese one. The only time one would awake to the realization that this is a Chinese drama is in the grandeur and pomp of the setting (Medieval European dramas are by contrast much simpler). The obsession with the manipulation of color with an intense monochromatic (mostly red) color imposed on a black and white background provided the visual appeals and readily captures the audience attentions to what is going on rather than be distracted by the rich background. Funny, this color manipulative approach seemed to be the “rage” in Chinese films nowadays. The martial arts choreography was a breathlessly stunning visual spectacle. If you are familiar with Jacky Chan movies and his brand of raw power and bare knuckle kung fu, the swordplays here are by contrast has more grace and beauty. It looked more like a dance or more succinctly, like a ballet (especially the fight scene at the beginning) except that it’s bloody. It would be more apt to describe it as a bloody sword dance or a murderous ballet of swords. So beautiful yet so deadly. Even so, the fight scenes though bloody are in no way gory at all. The dialogue in the movie is both simple, short, and sparingly little and is spoken in Mandarin with English subtitles. Though most of the dialogues are also mere allusions and seldom straightforward, the message they convey are nevertheless concise and clear if one matches the words with the actions of the characters. Overall, credit should be given to the director Feng for he manages to keep the focus on all the protagonists (around 6 of them) without losing sight of the movie i.e., without drifting into each individual character and furthermore, he manages to maintain the focus of the movie in spite of the arduously slow tempo of the movie.
Acting
The acting quality of the individual actors is exemplar. The actors are all character actors and they dwell into the emotional state of the characters they are playing. Take Zhang Zhe Yi for instance, she played the character of the Empress Wan. One could literally see the emotion played out in her face whether she is happy, jealous, lust, malicious, scheming, drunken with power, or even mourning (aside from that she has a great petite body with a beautiful back and a nice arse). The Emperor (the brother – in – law/usurper) was by contrast steely calm, grave, and indomitable but also surprisingly fragile. The actor who portrayed the role, played it with a straight face devoid of emotion. His speech is deliberately even and slow giving us an image of calm and control, of darkness and dignity, of strength and power. He hides his jealousy, his rage, his fear, his weakness so well that his subsequent actions came as a huge surprise to the audience and baffle us about his through nature. His taking of his own life at the end of the movie even though he is in no immediate danger of death and even of losing is one such prime example. It is only there we could see his weakness, his frailty, his defect as a human being. The Prince on other hand displayed melancholy, sadness all throughout and the actor (Danny Wu?) played it so well that one could actually see sadness in his eyes and actually believed he (the actor and not the character) is a sad figure.
Theme
The theme of the movie is quite simple and that is Love and Ambition don’t mix. Both Love and Ambition are inflammatory and one would ignite and fanned the flames in the other until both are burned down in the end. This is best expressed in a Chinese phrase, “Jiang san wuo mei ren”, “the world or the maiden’s hand”. Difficult choice but I know mine.
I went to see the much hyped about movie, The Banquet, last Sunday (October 21). And boy! Am I in for a treat! The movie is quite spectacular and is one of the best movies I’ve seen for the year and probably one on my list of the best movie of all times.
The Historical Background
The backdrop of the story is set during the Five Dynasty and Ten Kingdom Period in China (The civil war period sandwich between the Tang dynasty and the Sung dynasty). Few actually appreciate the significance of this historical period to the overall movie theme. The Five Dynasty period is a time when anarchy prevailed as a result of warlordism and civil war. In just a span of 70 or more years, 5 dynasties rise and fall in rapid succession. In these turbulent times, the Emperors are mere hostages to their aspiring generals while generals are hostage to their greedy and unruly soldiers. As a result, Emperors rarely died peacefully. Most of them died by assassinations and in rebellions. Because of the weakened state of the central authorities, local potentates came to control local affairs and thus rampant corruption ensued. And because of the frequent changes in regime, political survival and expediency became the norm and principles became an oddity. Morality is no more than a piece of paper and degeneracy sets in all levels of society. It is in this sad state of affairs that we find our heroes.
The Storyline
The movie begins with the Empress Wan entering the funeral chamber of the recently deceased Emperor, her husband. She was surprised to discover her brother – in – law (the late emperor’s brother) dressed in the armor of the emperor. Without much saying, she realized that the brother – in – law has in fact seize the imperial throne and he offered the Empress a choice, to be his consort or die. The Empress quite naturally spurned his indecent offer in a rather angry fashion but somehow relented in the end (Or did she?). With one potential opposition (the empress) removed, the brother – in – law sent out his royal bodyguard to assassinate the true heir of the throne unknowingly that the Empress Wan has also sent out her own trusted bodyguard to protect the true heir. The Prince – heir oblivious to the events outside his own reclusive world was actually sulking and was in the midst of doing a traditional play, The Song of the Yueh Women (he was actually more an artist than a prince). The Song is about a loner’s lament of unrequited love. While he was at it, the Empress’s bodyguards came and informed him of the news. Much afterwards, the assassins came and began one of most the visually spectacular sword fighting that I’ve seen. The fight was quite bloody. Everyone in the Prince’s entourage including the Empress’ bodyguard’s died fighting including the person posing as the Prince. The Prince only manages to survive because he gave his performance mask to his protector and hide underwater in the artificial lake. After surviving the massacre, he sets out to his home, the imperial palace and only to discover that his childhood love, his one and only, his step mother, the Empress Wan was in the midst of preparing to marry his uncle, the usurper, the murderer of his father, the new Emperor. The Prince was not just simply aggrieved but also beseech with anger and harbors vengeance. He visits his step – mother in the night ostensibly to confront her but also partly due to his longing to see his beloved. There happened one of the most awkward scenes. A man kneeling before the love of his life who is 4 years his junior and calling her mother. So close to his true love yet so far away. The Empress was equally hurt in such display of traditional Confucian obedience and filial piety for she still loved the Prince but couldn’t do so because she was technically his “mother” and tradition dictates that she acts accordingly. After that rather awkward confrontation came the idle pleasant exchange on their recent lives (nothing happened since both are strictly proper). Unknown to the two, the new Emperor, the usurper was about to enter the chamber when he overheard the idle murmur of the two. At first, he was surprised that his nephew, the true heir is alive but was no sooner overcome with jealousy. Even so, he kept his silence as his jealousy raged within him. How could she (his former sister – in – law and now his consort) do this to him? He (the new Emperor) could have given her everything she wanted. She was after all the object of his love (or lust depending on one’s view). Silently, he walks away and left the two alone. Amazingly, the Emperor kept his silence about the discovery even to his love, the Empress but grew increasingly distraught that she didn’t reveal the Prince’s survival to him until finally he couldn’t take it anymore and reveal what he knows to the Empress during a polo match (polo was actually invented in China during the Tang dynasty as an aristocratic sport). The Prince on the other hand was hiding in the house of his fiancé, the lady Ching, who was the daughter of a powerful minister, Yin. Minister Yin was an old but ambitious courtier as well as an astute politician, always going the way where the wind breezes. Lady Ching’s brother was a military governor of an important strategic province bordering the Khitans. Lady Ching was very much in love with the Prince so much so that she purportedly could communicate with her beau in her dreams (a sign of mental instability I would say). She would have given him everything even though she knew that he didn’t love her. Upon the discovery, the Emperor summoned the Prince for an audience and right then and there, he commanded the Prince to perform a swordplay with his royal guards since the Prince was considered the foremost swordsman in the realm, second only after the deceased emperor. The swordplay was to be played out using wooden swords to prevent injury and accidents but in the middle of the fighting, one of the guards changed his wooden sword for real thing and began carrying out the assassination attempt right in front of the Emperor who is pretending to have fallen asleep (and thereby claim innocence and be absolved of any guilt). The plot almost succeeded had it not been intervened and saved by the Empress who herself was an excellent swordsman. The emperor awoke and dismisses both the empress and the Prince. He silently looks at the guards and without warning kills the guard responsible for the foiled assassination. After that foiled assassination, the Prince became convinced that his uncle is behind the murder of his father and he sought out revenge. He visited an alchemist for a strongest poison known to man. However, he wasn’t convinced that the poison was strong but when he pressed the alchemist for another poison. He was stunned to realize that there is nothing more poisonous than a human heart. With that realization, he gave up revenge. On the day of the coronation, the new Emperor sent out for the Prince to entertain the imperial host with swordplays with the new Emperor’s bodyguards but the Prince refuses and instead, performs a play, which he wrote. The play tells the story of two brothers, one rich and the other poor. The rich brother loved and trusted his poor and evil younger brother but the latter had the former murdered through poison. The play was an indirect reference to the usurpation and murder by the new Emperor. The Emperor though clam was shaken by the knowledge of his nephew’s discovery and he immediately sent the Prince to exile as hostage to the Khitans. En route to the Khitans, the bodyguard – escorts attempted to murder the Prince but the Prince was saved by Lady Ching’s brother. It happened that Lady Ching volunteered to accompany the Prince to his exile but this offer offended the jealous Empress Wan that she had Lady Ching arrested and tortured. Using Lady Ching as hostage, the Empress came to an understanding with Minister Yin and plotted with Yin to save the Prince (through Yin’s son or Lady Ching’s brother) and eliminate the new Emperor via assassination. No sooner that the plot was hatch, Minister Yin plotted a coup within a coup. Only this time, Minister Yin intends to remove the Empress after the assassination of the new Emperor and to usurp the throne for himself. Meanwhile, the Empress is also scouting for poison and came upon the same alchemist that the Prince sought. Like the Prince, she asked whether or not there is a much more poisonous substance than the one she is holding and to which she also received the same reply, “the human heart”. However, unlike the soft – hearted Prince, she appeared unperturbed by the revelation and “rewarded” the alchemist with poison in order to keep him silent (a vile woman indeed). There afterwards she began to orchestrates events and on the hundredth day of her marriage to her brother – in – law, she beseech the Emperor to throw a feast and the Emperor obliged and ordered a banquet to be served in her honor that night. During the banquet, the Empress quietly slipped in the poison to the Emperor’s cup and proposes a toss. The Emperor was about to drink from the poisoned cup when all the sudden a troop of actors appeared led by Lady Ching. Lady Ching offered to stage a play, The Song of the Yueh Women to entertain the Emperor. The Emperor puzzled but eventually allowed and he offered as a gesture to Lady Ching, his poisoned cup (he has no knowledge about it). The Lady Ching drank the wine to the shock of his father, Minister Yin and his brother, who both are privy to the assassination plot. There followed one of the most harrowing scene in the movie, that of a broken hearted, dying woman slowly dancing and singing a heart wrenching song till her demise in the arms of the Prince, who happens to be the masked actor behind her. In the end, the Prince professes his love for the poor Lady Ching but everything is too late. Lady Ching’s brother literally flew out of his seat and snatched his sister away from the Prince’s embrace and the Prince so enraged by the tragedies that befell him, let out his sword and aimed towards the Emperor, only to be stopped by the royal bodyguards. Whilst the battle was raging, the Emperor though calm was visibly stunned by the knowledge of the poison and the attempt to assassinate him and most importantly, by the person he most loved and that person is none other than the Empress Wan. In a twist nobody expected, he called off the guards and confronted the Prince. There he wailed against fate and most likely disillusioned by the betrayal, he took the cup of poisoned wine and drank it to the last drop and slowly, the Emperor walked up to his throne while removing his crown and collapsed and died in the bosom of his wife, the Empress. The Empress immediately proclaimed the Prince as the new Emperor but was rejected by the Prince. While the commotion is on going, an enraged Lady Ching’s brother vented his ire on the scheming Empress. He pulled out a poison dagger and aimed at the Empress’ neck but was stopped by the Prince, who was in turn fatally wounded (the Empress killed Lady Ching’s brother). The Prince died immediately in the arms of his wailing beloved………..mother………… Minister Yin for in his part of the complicity of the attempted assassination of the Empress was exiled to a distant colony. With all opposition removed, Empress Wan assumed the throne but didn’t live long to enjoy her new – found power. She was murdered in the end.
The story sounded so much like Shakespeare’s Hamlet (or was it Othello?). In fact, if Shakespeare were born a Chinese, he would have probably written something like this. This is one tragedy after a tragedy and a tragedy within a tragedy. It is a tragedy after a tragedy because one could see in the latter part how one character after another fell, burned by their own doings. It is a tragedy within a tragedy because though the characters faced their individual tragedies, the greatest tragedy is that as humans, we are mere animals of our passion and our ambition and fate came along and played our passions and our ambitions and turned us into victims of our own deeds. It makes me wonder though if we are just merely stupid or fate was being cruel.
Direction, Cinematography, and Martial Arts Play
The film is directed by Feng Xiao Kang. One thing I could say about the movie is that it is not your traditional Chinese martial arts – imperial age drama. The armors worn by the imperial guards reminded me of the Sauron’s dragon flying – minions in the Lord of the Rings movie. In fact, though the architecture is definitely Chinese, the black and white colored backdrop and the unconventional designs readily gives an impression that this is more of a Medieval European drama (and hence, the seeming reference to Shakespeare) rather than a Medieval Chinese one. The only time one would awake to the realization that this is a Chinese drama is in the grandeur and pomp of the setting (Medieval European dramas are by contrast much simpler). The obsession with the manipulation of color with an intense monochromatic (mostly red) color imposed on a black and white background provided the visual appeals and readily captures the audience attentions to what is going on rather than be distracted by the rich background. Funny, this color manipulative approach seemed to be the “rage” in Chinese films nowadays. The martial arts choreography was a breathlessly stunning visual spectacle. If you are familiar with Jacky Chan movies and his brand of raw power and bare knuckle kung fu, the swordplays here are by contrast has more grace and beauty. It looked more like a dance or more succinctly, like a ballet (especially the fight scene at the beginning) except that it’s bloody. It would be more apt to describe it as a bloody sword dance or a murderous ballet of swords. So beautiful yet so deadly. Even so, the fight scenes though bloody are in no way gory at all. The dialogue in the movie is both simple, short, and sparingly little and is spoken in Mandarin with English subtitles. Though most of the dialogues are also mere allusions and seldom straightforward, the message they convey are nevertheless concise and clear if one matches the words with the actions of the characters. Overall, credit should be given to the director Feng for he manages to keep the focus on all the protagonists (around 6 of them) without losing sight of the movie i.e., without drifting into each individual character and furthermore, he manages to maintain the focus of the movie in spite of the arduously slow tempo of the movie.
Acting
The acting quality of the individual actors is exemplar. The actors are all character actors and they dwell into the emotional state of the characters they are playing. Take Zhang Zhe Yi for instance, she played the character of the Empress Wan. One could literally see the emotion played out in her face whether she is happy, jealous, lust, malicious, scheming, drunken with power, or even mourning (aside from that she has a great petite body with a beautiful back and a nice arse). The Emperor (the brother – in – law/usurper) was by contrast steely calm, grave, and indomitable but also surprisingly fragile. The actor who portrayed the role, played it with a straight face devoid of emotion. His speech is deliberately even and slow giving us an image of calm and control, of darkness and dignity, of strength and power. He hides his jealousy, his rage, his fear, his weakness so well that his subsequent actions came as a huge surprise to the audience and baffle us about his through nature. His taking of his own life at the end of the movie even though he is in no immediate danger of death and even of losing is one such prime example. It is only there we could see his weakness, his frailty, his defect as a human being. The Prince on other hand displayed melancholy, sadness all throughout and the actor (Danny Wu?) played it so well that one could actually see sadness in his eyes and actually believed he (the actor and not the character) is a sad figure.
Theme
The theme of the movie is quite simple and that is Love and Ambition don’t mix. Both Love and Ambition are inflammatory and one would ignite and fanned the flames in the other until both are burned down in the end. This is best expressed in a Chinese phrase, “Jiang san wuo mei ren”, “the world or the maiden’s hand”. Difficult choice but I know mine.
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