Seven Swords (Qi jian)

Yesterday, or the day before technically, I went out for dinner and a movie with my roommates. One of whom moved out today. Dinner was good and filling. The movie we saw was Tsui Hark's Seven Swords. It's a martial arts movie, based as most wuxia novels are, on the Qing dynasty. In the film the emperor issued an edict against practitioners of martial arts. The film follows the exploits of a general referred to as Fire-Wind and his lieutenants who behead entire villages including women and children in order to earn the most amount per head. The conflict centers around the fate of one village which is attacked by Fire-Wind. Disobeying the head man, a young woman Wu Yuanyin and a young man Han, escape with a former torturer who is now repenting of his sins and who had arrived with news of Fire-Wind's arrival, but was about to be condemned to death. They leave in order to seek help from Tianshan or Mount Heaven. They come back with magical swords and companions making up the Seven Swords of the film.

The characterization of the movie could have used some work. Many of the characters's stories are only briefly touched upon so it makes it difficult to distinguish between them. Also there are many love triangles which are strangely interconnected and besides the 7 Swords there are other characters such as the Headman's daughter, and Fire-Wind's liberated Korean slave girl, Luzhu. There were also some more intriguing characters that I wished we could have seen more of, such as Fire-Wind's evil and powerful lieutenant. There are actually quite a few women in the film, besides Yuanyin who is the Seven Swords' "token girl." I thought her story was an interesting one and it would have also been nice if there had been more about her. In many ways she sets the events of the film in motion by saving the old man in the first place and then convincing Han and her best friend to help her rescue him. The main narrative opens with her crying after murdering one of Fire-Wind's men and ends with her firmly choosing the "Jianghu" society and becoming a fearsome hero herself.

Apparently this movie was supposed to be 4 hours long, which I think would definitely have been justified in order to do these characters justice. The beginning in particular was a little rushed since it's not quite clear how they get to Tianshan or how they get convince those who live on Tianshan to help them. The relationships and even identities of all the Seven Swords are never quite clear sometimes. It would have been nice to at least cleared that up.

However, these things aside, I enjoyed the movie. The fight scenes are spectacular and often very beautiful. It was clearly shot with a fairly high budget because the costumes and special effects are mostly good. Possibly one of the more coherent subplots is Wu Yuanyin and Han's metamorphosis from country bumpkins to heroes which is pretty clear by the end. Although there were a lot of gaps in its logic to my mind, I was willing to be carried along by the internal logic in the film. It ends up making sense even if I would have appreciated the information much earlier. In the end it still has the desired effect which is fine by me. The different characters not being developed isn't very important because we already know what the characters stand for anyway. The story was fairly exciting and interesting and above all, entertaining. I'll probably enjoy it more when I can see it again and try to keep all the characters straight. In any case it was fun.

For a meta experience you can read my now former roommate's review of the same movie that we saw in the same place at the same time.