Competition review - THE ASSASSIN by Hou Hsiao-Hsien

Eight years after his last film, Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-Hsien returns with The Assassin, in competition at the 68th Cannes Film Festival.

 

Taiwanese master of cinema Hou Hiso-Hsien makes his return to the big screen eight years after his last feature with The Assassin, his most ambitious film to date in which he takes on the period martial arts genre. The film is set during the time of the Ting Dinasty in China. It mostly revolves around the titular character of the assassin, Yinniang, a woman kidnapped at the age of 10 and trained to be an infallible assassin and to fulfill the task of murdering corrupt political leaders. But it also revolves around her enigmatic relationship with Lord Ting, the man whom she cannot bring herself to kill near the start of the film, softened by the presence of his young son and by her own personal motives. 

 

This is a rather loose outline of the plot, out of which many more subplot spin off and many different intimate, political and thrilling sides of the story. This may test the average viewer, and make the narrative seem unfocused. But that is a purposeful choice that aims to inspire a natural intuitive connection by leaving grey areas in the plot, rather than spoonfeeding the viewer.

 

This particular choice is balanced by a great focus and care in building a sensual atmosphere. The Assassin moves at a slow pace, and particularly in the scenes within the Imperial walls, is underlined by a solemn and meditative mood. To do so, many specific approaches are employed. For instance, the soundtrack is made of rattling sounds and a drum can regularly be heard banging in the distance, as if providing a musical rhythm to the film. Likewise the art direction is spectacular, and the sets are stunning right down to their particulars, which can be admired as it is given great attention by the cinematography, which on its own part takes advantage of the black, gold and red colour patterns and allows the photography to linger on them even after the characters have moved out of the frame. This last point also flirts with spirituality in the scenes of the forest, where the techniques highlights a sensibility to the feeling of eternal inspired by nature. 

 

It is worth mentioning that camera movements are very fluid, often uninterrupted by editing, dominated by pans and tilts and often made up of long shots, that succesfully keep the characters at a distance and their personal motives even more enigmatic. This particular style may seem to leave little room for stand out performances, also given the fact that a lot of the film is composed by silences, poetic prose and monologues rather than quick character dialogue interactions. However, in the scheme of things, Shu Qi and Cheng Chen head a cast that seems to understand and convey the powerful vision of Hou Hsiao-Hsien by moving gracefully, particularly in the short, sharp and sweet fight sequences, but also by exhuming incredible quiet charisma.

 

Other creative touches such as the inclusion of electronic instruments in particular sequences of the film, or the filming of the introduction in black and white, highlight The Assassin's singularity. Yes, there are fight sequences in the film, but The Assassin is a very different movie from the likes of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and therefore they do not dominate the Hou Hsiao-Hsien's work. They rather act as sudden interruptions that temporarily disturb the flow of the movie, stirring a sharply contrasting type of beauty in their own right.