THE ETERNAL PRICE OF POWER

By

Thomas Burchfield

The Emperor & the Assassin: Chinese historical epic. Starring Gong Li, Lixuejian and Zhang Fengyei . Music by Zhao Jiping. Cinematography by Zhao Fe. Screenplay by Chen Kaige and Wang Peigong. Directed by Chen Kaige. Subtitled. Rated ‘R’. Now Playing at Bay Area Theaters.

POSTHOC RATING:

Chinese filmmakers have been making great historical movies the last ten years and the latest example of this incredible renaissance in epic filmmaking is the heart-poundingly beautiful The Emperor and the Assassin, a film that easily ranks with the best of Akira Kurosawa’s masterful explorations of politics and men at war.

This astonishing, ravishing and superbly directed and photographed film is set in the Chinese Second Century B.C., when the Emperor Ying Zheng (Lixuejian) of the Chin Dynasty was ruthlessly uniting the various patchwork Kingdoms that then made up China and make himself China’s first emperor.

Thanks to Kaige and Wang Peigong’s perceptive script, this is no dry portrait of a rigid tyrant, but a fully rounded study of a ruler who is often as insecure, diffident and pathetic as a love-struck teenager. This is especially brought out when we meet his concubine and lifelong love Zhao (the radiant Gong Li), the one person who can turn him into a blithering adolescent fool.

Zhao also shares Zheng’s vision of a unified China. With him she conspires to trick the Kingdom of Yan into sending an assassin to kill him and so provide a pretext for a declaration of war. To do this Zhao arranges to have her beautiful face branded as a prisoner to gain the trust of one of Zheng’s prisoners, the Prince of Yan, and accompany him back to Yan as part of a prisoner swap.

In Yan’s capital Zhao finds the perfect assassin in the legendary King Je (Zhang Fengyei) a man who turned away from a life of violence after the death of a young girl, but still retains a professional killer’s deadly grace and skill. The Princess seduces her way into his heart and so persuades him to take on the dangerous mission.

But nothing, of course, goes as expected. Back at the Palace, the Emperor finds intrigue and betrayal swirling around him. Paranoia is certainly not unknown among kings and Zheng’s explodes into an incredible rage of bloodlust and ruthless counterbetrayal of everyone he knows, even the woman he loves.

The story becomes a gripping and beautiful illustration of that old Chinese saying, "Be careful what you wish for." Emperor Zheng may achieve his goal of a unified China, but the price he pays is too high for any man to pay, even one with the mandate of Heaven. His reach for glory leaves him only with a handful of bloody sand. Sic transit gloria. This emotional demonstration of the futility of empire still rings true today, 2200 years later.

Director Kaige (who also plays Prime Minister Lu Buwei, which, along with handling the demands of the epic, must have been a terribly difficult job) and cinematographer Zhao Fei have caught some of the most astonishing, heart-stopping imagery seen in years. The scope of the film is simply incredible. It truly looks like they employed a cast of tens of thousands, stretching far away into China’s beautiful horizons. The camera swoops along with the horses and men charging into battle after bloody battle. A flat plain of dirt is slowly scraped away to reveal the most helpless victims of war. While the continuity is off in some scenes, it doesn’t drain any of the power of this magnificent epic. All this is gracefully supported by Zhao Jiping’s eerie and mournful music score.

The historical epic has been called a lost art form (and judging by recent disasters like The Messenger, it should be), but The Emperor and the Assassin (along with last year’s The Emperor’s Shadow), shows there is still much art to be mined. Next to it, even Ben Hur looks a little dog-eared.