Why Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s best wuxia films are Shadow and Curse of the Golden Flower

Hero and House of Flying Daggers are Zhang Yimou’s most famous wuxia films, but they are not his best. The Chinese filmmaker’s greatest accomplishments in the wuxia genre lie elsewhere.

Curse of the Golden Flower (2006)

Zhang’s first two wuxia films, Hero and House of Flying Daggers were criticised in mainland China for being superficial, so he decided to make 2006’s Curse of the Golden Flower heavy on plot.

The film’s storyline is based on Cao Yu’s classic 1934 play Thunderstorm, which tells of the demise of a powerful family through incest, personal tyranny and corruption in the 1930s. Zhang decided to transpose the story to the late Tang dynasty (923AD to 937AD), a time of opulence and wealth in China – and one framed by corruption and decay after the dynasty’s stable early period.

The film differs from Zhang’s earlier two “action” films, and the later Shadow, in that it is as much a palace drama and a war film as it is a wuxia film.

Still, the martial arts scenes, directed by Hong Kong master Tony Ching Siu-tung, are pushed to the fore, and the action – more fantastical than realistic – is seamlessly integrated with the drama.

Gong Li stars as Empress Phoenix, whose husband, Emperor Ping (Chow Yun-fat), is poisoning her. The empress is having an affair with her stepson, and has planned an insurrection led by her son Prince Jai (Jay Chou), setting the scene for deception, disaster and doom

Chow Yun-fat, meanwhile, wields a sword more flamboyantly than he did in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon six years earlier. Ching also choreographed a mass battle sequence – a military massacre – which makes heavy use of CGI.

“Ching Siu-tung and I have collaborated on many projects,” said Zhang in the film’s notes, referring to their work on House of Flying Daggers and Hero, and to Zhang’s lead role in 1989’s A Terracotta Warrior, which Ching directed.

“His action design excels in the battle sequence where thousands of warriors, armoured in gold, charge the palace. This pivotal scene is one of my favourites. In this sequence, amid festive activities, the ugly secrets of the imperial family are being unravelled.”

There is also some interesting use of traditional weaponry – the court doctor, for instance, fights with the rarely used Monk’s Spade, which is a pole weapon.

(From left) Jay Chou, Gong Li and Chow Yun-fat in a still from Curse of the Golden Flower.

The golden-hued sets are ornate, and the costumes, designed to reflect the court outfits of France’s Louis XIV, “the Sun King”, are decadent. The low-cut dresses of the women – unusual in Chinese period dramas – were criticised by some, but Zhang says they are accurate.

“Prominent cleavage was a court fashion during the [later Tang] era,” he told the UCLA Asia-Pacific Centre in an interview. “It’s quite authentic.”

Shadow (2018)

Shadow is the best of Zhang’s wuxia films, combining a well-planned storyline – inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s classic Kagemusha, Zhang revealed – with impressive martial arts scenes that reflect the traditions of the genre.

The characters expand on types defined by Chang Cheh, and Zhang has refined them to add more human dimensions. There’s even a classically inspired training sequence, although this depicts the more mysterious Wudang style of martial arts rather than the usual Shaolin style because of the historical period in which the film is set.

Zhang’s overarching aim with Shadow is to explore how feminine yin can overcome masculine yang and Taoist philosophy teaches the hero to follow the natural flow of battle rather than strike out aggressively.

The story was inspired by the “Three Kingdoms” period in the third century AD, when three cities fought for dominance of Jingzhou in China. An ailing military commander forces a near-identical-looking man to stand in for him as part of a plot to invade a neighbouring city and dethrone his own king. But his “shadow” is clever, and realises that he can turn the situation to his own advantage – although not without bloodshed.

Deng Chao in a still from Shadow.

“This film is ultimately about struggle, survival, dire predicaments and wild ambition – how a common man can manage not only to survive amidst the power games of the aristocracy, but even manage to turn defeat into victory,” Zhang says in the film’s production notes.

Inventing unusual gadgetry and weapons is part of the wuxia tradition, and Zhang developed some lethal metal umbrellas for the invaders to use. The metal is flexible and supports the idea of yin overcoming yang.

“For Shadow, the style of the action was representing the principle of soft conquers hard, yin conquers yang, water is more powerful than fire – that’s why the movements [in the action scenes] are kind of feminine,” cinematographer Zhao Xiaoding told online magazine The Film Stage.

Zhang Yimou after winning the best director award for Shadow at the 55th Golden Horse film awards in Taiwan in 2018. Photo: AFP

Choreographed by Hong Kong’s Dee Dee Ku (Ku Huen-chiu), who handled the action for Chen Kaige’s bloody work The Sacrifice, the combatants do not have super powers but their fighting styles are still exaggerated in the wuxia tradition.

Zhao said he aimed for a touch of realism while shooting for Zhang: “If an actor can perform the stunts, do not cut a body double into the scenes – don’t try and chop it all up and put it together. Let the actor complete the action, film it, and put it on the screen. That’s a very simple principle, but it elevates everything.”

Zhang intended the overall look of the film to reflect Chinese ink-brush painting, so the colour scheme is muted. Almost everything on the screen is real – there were very few computer effects – and even the rain was genuine, the result of numerous rain machines that could provide different size droplets.

Wang Qianyuan (front) in a still from Shadow.