Hero

This weekend Nudnikette and I went to see Hero. The movie is beautifully made, and halfway through the movie I turned to Nudnikette and said that this is simply eye-candy without anything else. However, in the final quarter of the movie I was disabused of that notion, and walked out of the movie appalled by it. Here is Nudnikette's review:

Hero, a film by Zhang Yimou - China's celebrated supposed dissident filmmaker - is mind numbingly beautiful. Its formal appeal however, is, indeed mind numbing. Lacking anything but a simplistic plot, it makes up for complexity in its trendy post-modern flashback narrative and altering view-points, Hero's progress is ruled by vivid, visually stunning tableau-vivants, orchestrated with rather obvious and heavy-handed color symbolism, and possessing the uncanny distinction of instant freeze-up quality: stop the rolling film at any point and you have yourself a gorgeous, if somewhat meaningless, poster. Not so much vivant, but mostly tableau-morts, then. And dying is what your brain does while being inundated by the onslaught of repetitive waves of pure formalist delight. Once the denouement of the movie arrives the spectator is so caught up in the web of gently billowing fabric (a constant leitmotif) that the real agenda is all but veiled.

A blatant political propaganda, Hero disguises its motive by lulling the viewer into believing that the rapture of beauty is not the means but the end, while the end is actually a celebration, a justification, and an endorsement of a dictatorial regime. Hero operates with the hallmarks of totalitarian cinematic propaganda, easily comparable to high Stalinist culture of the Soviet 1930s:

- amalgamation of pseudo-folkloric elements and modern stylistic language to create a seamless hybrid of doubled affirmation, both from past and present

-a personalization of the tyrant as a father figure that seeks to do the best for the country, while paying a high personal price for his efforts

- displacement of execution of punishment from the tyrant to 'the people' or 'the advisors' who serve as proxies to take responsibility for his cruelty

-the elevation of a nameless commoner to a hero status to celebrate the achievements of the regime

Hero, in short, is no art film. It is vile and insidious propaganda, nothing more than a postcard from beautiful China, an advertisement of its prosperity. And it is all the more insidious because so few critics have caught on. The New Republic was one of the first, in a nuanced and cogent review. FrontPage, a little heavy handed and much more direct also weighed in.