The Assassin (2015)

Wrote this for my school newspaper but they never published it because, let's face it, nobody cares about Hou Hsiao-hsien at my school.

The Assassin

Jiaqi Kang

In a 2001 interview with Michael Berry, Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien and his longtime collaborator, writer Chu T’ien-wen, express their desire to make a film based on the Tang dynasty story of Nie Yinniang, a female assassin with ambiguous morals. She’s a ruthless killer who spent her formative teenage years being trained in martial arts, after having been kidnapped by her teacher, and feels no remorse about her sins. She has a dagger implanted inside her skull so she’s always ready for murder, and is so unconventional in nature that, despite her upper-class background, she marries a lowly mirror-polisher. She then gets tangled up in a Game of Thrones-style schism at the royal court, where she easily betrays those to whom she swore loyalty. Overall, the story is about a woman who lives by her own moral code—a contemplative Daoist tale of finding one’s own path.

Re-reading this segment of the interview after having seen The Assassin (Cike Nie Yinniang), the movie that Hou and Chu finally got to make in 2015, it’s astonishing to see how much the concept has been developed in the past fourteen years: what was once a compelling and pensive coming-of-age story has now become a massive, incontrovertible bore. It seems that frivolous things such as an interesting sequence of events and coherent narration are so passé, and the only thing you really needs to make a good film is willpower, pretty mountains, and a reputation so excellent that nobody will ever question your dubious decisions.

Instead of undergoing all the exciting escapades listed above, the dark and complicated antihero of the story, Ms. Nie, spends 105 minutes on film really just hanging around and doing nothing. Of course, she’s fighting an inner battle: she’s pining after the man she was ordered to kill, who just so happens to be the lord of the land, who just so happens to be her childhood crush, who just so happens to be her first cousin. It’s frustrating, because he’s not even that attractive. I enjoy looking at Chang Chen’s face for prolonged periods of time as much as anyone else does, but less so when he’s wearing that questionable moustache-and-goatee combination. Maybe that kind of facial hair was in vogue in the 9th century—so in vogue that stoic, cool-headed assassins such as Nie Yinniang (who, by the way, is totally out of his league) are completely led astray by it, rendered into passive puppets that do very little except mope around. Here she is, in a corner of his bedroom, watching him cuddle his lover as she hides behind beautiful patterned curtains that whirl softly around in the wind. Here she is again, standing in the bamboo, her footsteps muffled by the murmuring of the leaves in the wind.  Here she is again, taking a bath and looking rather miserable as the flame of the candles flicker in the wind. There’s a lot of wind in the noble fields of Weibo—it beats constantly against everything in the frame, lightly so as to not disrupt the visual flow, but strong enough to mark its presence. I guess it’s here to represent the conflict in her soul as she struggles to decide whether to kill the man she loves or disappoint her master. It’s a shame, then, that I empathise more for the wind than for the conflict in her soul. At this point, it’s one of the most engaging characters in a film that is so dreary, it put itself to sleep.

But perhaps I missed out on the profound meaningfulness of the whole thing because I spent most of the time waiting for there to be enough noise for me to surreptitiously retrieve a Petit Beurre from the packet in my hand and eat it. The sound of crunching is awfully loud in a cinema when the movie playing is pretty much silent 80% of the time, save for the impatient trilling of birds in the background and the heroic efforts of our fantastic breakthrough actor, the wind. The most thrilling thing I experienced the entire time was when I was trying to chew the hard biscuits without drawing attention to myself. The suspense was almost unbearable: would I ever be able to bite down on the food in my mouth without drowning out the tedious conversation between this noble lady and that other dude? And so it was a relief when the longest fight scene finally took place. It was truly a highlight of the story, not only because the clang of swords and thuds of falling bodies allowed me to consume two entire Petits Beurres, but because there was action. I didn’t even mind that I had no idea what was happening, because at least something was happening. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t tell which side I was supposed to be on—I was overjoyed simply to see some people move at a faster pace than a brisk jog.

This is not to say, however, that the film was awful. It was not. Critics revelled in the wondrous beauty of it, and I agree with them wholeheartedly. Some of the shots in there were absolutely overwhelming in their colour and composition. The still waters with their tiny ripples that reflected the flushed scarlet hues of dawn; the delicately poised blossoms that seemed to beckon at the audience; the spectre-like fog entwined around the hills… it’s true that every shot brought new visual pleasure to the eyes, resembling classical Chinese ink paintings injected with heavenly souls and luscious colors. However, if Hou’s aim was to show us pretty pictures, he could have made a photography album, or high-definition gifs, or something else of that kind. Watching The Assassin was like eating a sandwich made of dozens of different types of divinely delicious bread, but with no filling except for a little bit of salt and half a teaspoon of mayonnaise. And maybe a couple of fresh, crisp pieces of salad. But two at the most.

It’s a painfully slow film full of arbitrary imagery, but I am hereby giving it 0.2 points more than it deserves because I know how it feels when you spend ages on a project and it does not turn out the way you wanted it to, but instead of going back to fix it, you just let it be, because you are sick of having to deal with it. It’s okay, Hou Hsiao-hsien, it’s okay. I understand you.

5.2/10