Synopsis
Ming dynasty noblewoman Yang must escape from the evil eunuch Hsu. She seeks refuge at a decrepit town where she gets assistance from a naïve scholar and a group of mysterious yet powerful monks.
A Touch of Zen
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Alternative Titles
Les Maîtres du Zen, Xia Nu, Kultainen hämähäkki, Chivalrous Lady, A Tocha de Zen, Les Héroïques, Xia nü, SHA-NU, Касание Дзен
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Popular reviews
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casts nature as mysterious, tangled but carefully deliberate, and casts reformers combating totalitarianism as potential ghosts, the past returning to claim its place, the dead returning to vanquish their living betrayers. Hu famously continues to restore to film from Chinese literature the female knight, another piece of the past that now points forward. and the male hero finds his strength only after he sleeps with her and meets the Abbot; the power here is sexual, literally balls to bones, naturally emanating from within. the villain, corrupt and unseen, is a eunuch; his power is baseless, empty, founded on lies. sex vs death. the film folds themes in so gradually that you truly float down the river without ever seeming to get wet.
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100
As dreamy as the rivers in which we seek nourishment and as haunting as the figures which impede the voids which we yearn to observe in the darkness. One of those movies that check every box on the list and even invent a few new categories just for the hell of it.
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the story begins with a spider-web.
there is a man, with weak smiles and expert painting hands. there is a doctor who only arrived in town last month and holds mysteries in his eyes. there is an agent who hides behind laundry-lines and mercilessly hunts for his prey. there is an old fort with ghosts lurking in the rafters. and there is a woman armed with nothing but determination and steel, running for her life.
the story will not end with defeat.
the army is marching across rivers and plains and rocks. they claim they stand for the laws of the land and they hide behind the rules so they can commit injustices. earthly matters of greed and power are…
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I love how this starts as something of an horror mystery develops towards earthly matters and later achieves heaven.
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a corporeal, elemental and mystical dance of death... and eventually life. not quite the movie i was expecting after Dragon Inn which despite having higher aesthetic ambitions as well is almost a pure, rollicking kung fu action movie in comparison to this which seems interested in the fighting in so much as it contributes to the larger sense of feeling and dreaming these characters, locations, histories, myths. but one hell of a movie nonetheless and one the genres most transcendent finales. "humans can't fight ghosts."
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A spineless nerd who takes a backseat to his own story until he gets to play armchair Napoleon/Home Alone using all his military history reading. Having found his confidence from getting laid and setting a bunch of traps, he walks through the aftermath howling with laughter at his brilliance until he sees all the bodies his creativeness has left behind. Another classic Hu heroine emerges in a whirl of steely looks and vicious lunges, acquiescing to partnering with our protagonist but leaving him before social mores can sap her of her fierce independence.
And the interest in nature's beautiful indifference that cropped up at the margins of Dragon Inn is now arguably more centered than the ostensible lead, starting with…
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Someday, some enterprising company is going to restore and rerelease these King Hu movies and then they're going to get a whole lot of my money.
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It's probably a good five minutes before we see any human beings in A Touch of Zen - before that it's the title sequence, then some close-ups of insects in spider's webs, and various shots of water, trees, light, nature at rest. It's like a soft prayer before the story begins, and it's your first clue that this is no typical kung-fu action movie, containing almost none of the genre's usual concessions to audience attention spans. Even when the action does start up, it's pretty removed from the expected Shaw Bros. athleticism, instead punctuated by long stretches of patient waiting in between the jump-cut-aided fight choreography, just outside physical reality as we (think we) know it.
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Using what critical facilities I have when it comes to 1960s-70s Asian cinema (ie. fairly limited), what is striking to me in the work of King Hu is how pointedly different it is from an action choreographer like Lau Kar-Leung. Notably, Hu's action is at one more simple and more fantastic. The sequences here (which the first only happens after an hour of set up) are built on notably longer takes (meaning at least a 4-5 ASL during action), often shot from a distance, and most notably are built around pausing. The too oft-repeated "kung fu like ballet" doesn't seem as appropriate here - the action is built around one or two careful blows followed by long pauses where the…
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Trees shimmer. Sword glints. Light winks off water. Blade blurs. A body falls. The wind blows. Struggle ties us to this world, knots us to this dominion. Once untangled, we bleed gold.
A landmark in the elevation of wuxia. There are sequences so impressionistic, so hypnotic and mesmerizing, that watching them delivers on the title of the film completely.
Told in three separate acts, each so distinct from one another as to almost be three short stories. Yet, as character perspectives shift and the narrative blooms, we realize everything is part of a larger connected tapestry, rich and wide and singularly conscious.
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Matthew Ekstrom's #1 Film Selection for Edgar
Impossible to fight against its power... Impossible to be overwhelmed by its technical brilliance...
I cannot fight against it!
Screened at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, and winning a Technical Grand Prize, King Hu's massively influential, multifaceted work of art Xia nü became the first Mandarin language film ever to win a major western film festival award.
Still, the size and scope of the film overshadow this fact, almost transforming it into a futile piece of trivia.
With a massive array of both philosophical and technical offerings, the massively underappreciated Taiwanese treasure has the most unusual capacity to transform itself into something else with each episodic advancement it makes through time:
1) It…
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Criterion Collection Spine #825
(Foreign language film)(The Average Joe’s Movie Club Cast Episode 14)
A majestic slow burn of Chinese cinema, that packs a punch when it comes to its high flying martial arts action, sword duels, and eastern spirituality.
"I've been a student of military strategy since I was a child ... If they can be lured here ... I can find a way to crush them!
I was excited to check out Director King Hu's A Touch of Zen, after I had heard it was an inspiration for Ang Lee's 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'. But before it gets to its excellent action set pieces, there was a whole lot story that was a little hard to follow,…
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