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The Assassin (2015)
As soon as I saw the trailer for Hou Hsiao-hsien's 'The Assassin' back in 2015 I bought the blu-ray. That misleading marketing promotes it as a sumptuous 'Hero'/'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon' style art-house action Wuxia film (and stars Chang Chen from the latter), plus it's in the 4:3 ratio I love. I got about 20-minutes into it but was so bored I never got round to finishing it until today. I know what to expect from Hou Hsiao-hsien by now, like no exposition, long, long, long shots of seemingly inconsequential things e.g. he spends several minutes showing servants carefully preparing a bath in silence for the protagonist, only to show her in the bath for 3-seconds. The trailer and the Wikipedia synposis were helpful in understanding the convoluted political-intrigue plot. The costumes, props, buildings and cinematography are so beautiful and richly detailed that they're almost enough to make this otherwise dull film worth watching. The bagpipe raveup end title music ('Rohan' by Bagad Men Ha Tan & Doudou N'diaye Rose) was the best bit, it woke me up and got my toes tapping.
This is a banger!
As soon as I saw the trailer for Hou Hsiao-hsien's 'The Assassin' back in 2015 I bought the blu-ray. That misleading marketing promotes it as a sumptuous 'Hero'/'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon' style art-house action Wuxia film (and stars Chang Chen from the latter), plus it's in the 4:3 ratio I love. I got about 20-minutes into it but was so bored I never got round to finishing it until today. I know what to expect from Hou Hsiao-hsien by now, like no exposition, long, long, long shots of seemingly inconsequential things e.g. he spends several minutes showing servants carefully preparing a bath in silence for the protagonist, only to show her in the bath for 3-seconds. The trailer and the Wikipedia synposis were helpful in understanding the convoluted political-intrigue plot. The costumes, props, buildings and cinematography are so beautiful and richly detailed that they're almost enough to make this otherwise dull film worth watching. The bagpipe raveup end title music ('Rohan' by Bagad Men Ha Tan & Doudou N'diaye Rose) was the best bit, it woke me up and got my toes tapping.
This is a banger!