Hero

Zhang Yimou has created over a dozen films that are rich in their representation of Chinese culture and traditions. His film, Hero, is a tale about Nameless, a man who is planning to assassinate the King of Qin. It and is based on historical events that took place in 227 B.C. It is his first film in which he intertwines martial arts and the fine arts.

The use of color is a major technique Zhang Yimou employs in conveying the themes in the story. The same story is told three times in four different colors, each time from a different perspective. The first of the three versions of the story is told by Nameless and reveals how he tricked and defeated the other assassins. Black and red, the first two colors Zhang Yimou chose, are colors that represent evil. The predominant color in the beginning scene of the film is black. Lao Zi, the highly-revered mystic philosopher of ancient China, said “five colors make people blind.” Blind in this sense is equivalent to dark or black. The color black has significance in the first scene as it is used to convey deceit. Red overtones are also used to symbolize passion and danger.

In the second part of the film, the king tells his version of what happened. The king had encountered the assassins previously and created his story based on how the story would have played out according to their personalities. This sequence was shot in beautiful shades of blue which represent purity.

In the last section of the movie, the predominant color is white. This version of the story reveals events as they really happened. Therefore, white represents truth.

The thematic use of contrasting colors from black all the way to white not only effectively conveys the story’s central themes, but also results in a visually breathtaking and beautiful film.

One of the story’s central characters is the assassin, Broken Sword. He is driven by his desire for the king to create a unified country, “our land.” As the story unfolds, Broken Sword persuades Nameless to embrace his idea of “our land” and to abandon his plan to assassinate the king. The king of the state of Qin eventually became the first emperor of a unified China in 221 B.C. The movie plot builds on its concept of unity by having multiple stories that all come together at the end to form the truth. At very end of the movie, the color switches back to black and the king is pressured into killing Nameless. While this outcome is surprising, it adds a feeling of reality.

In Hero, Zhang Yimou skillfully and effectively juxtaposes fighting and art. He adds traditional Chinese music to the fighting scenes and even includes a scene in which students are doing calligraphy while the school is being penetrated and destroyed by thousands of arrows. Interestingly, while assassination is a central theme of the story, bloodshed is symbolically represented rather than overtly demonstrated. Zhang Yimou creates moments in which there should be a lot of blood and gore, but he chooses to only depict the bloodshed though droplets of blood falling off a sword to the floor. The only place in the film that shows the overt act of blood being drawn is the scene in which the assassin spares the king’s life and merely scratches his neck with a sword.

Hero is a very creative re-telling of the attempted assassination on the Qin King. It is artistically pleasing and action–packed, maintaining the viewer’s attention from beginning to end. The director’s imaginative use of color, music, and action stimulates the viewer’s imagination, resulting in a memorable film. This movie is considered a mile-stone in Chinese cinema and received international acclaim.