By Daniel Eagan
Translator: Yi Ersan
Proofreader: Chen Sihang
Source: Film Review
Seven years after the release of "Red Balloon Journey", director Hou Xiaoxian has finally returned with the long-simmering epic film "The Assassin Nie Yinniang". The film premiered in the United States at the New York Film Festival earlier this month and was shown in theaters last weekend.
The Assassin Nie Yinniang (2015)
Winner of best director at the Cannes Film Festival, Assassin Nie Yinniang is a stunning martial arts film starring his longtime muse Shu Qi as a woman who was kidnapped and trained as an assassin in her early years in the ninth century, and when she grew up, she was sent home to assassinate the person she once loved.
For Hou Xiaoxian, making a historical martial arts film may be a new beginning, and he is known for his nuanced portrayal of everyday life, but that hasn't stopped him from inheriting traditions and incorporating them into his own style. In a recent interview, he said to me, "I've always wanted to inject a sense of realism into the genre, and that's why I've been able to create my own limits — and as a director, creating limits is actually quite free."
Shot on 35mm film, "The Assassin Nie Yinniang" brilliantly captures the visual richness of the Tang Dynasty — from the candlelight through the tulle to the lush Chinese gardens — and emotionally evokes memories of that era.
In the past three decades, Hou Xiaoxian has opened up a unique artistic path, but he also readily admits that he is actually dipped in the light of the predecessors of previous generations of directors. During the New York Film Festival, he sat down with the festival's curator, Kent Jones, at Lincoln Center to discuss (and screen) footage from films that had influenced him throughout his life. ("I've been very impressed by these old films," Mr. Hou told me the other day, "and if I had been born in that era, I probably wouldn't have made any breakthroughs, let alone become the director I am today.") ）
Their discussions were conducted in English and Mandarin (Hou Xiaoxian's translation was led by Vincent Tzu-Wen Cheng, a professor at the City University of New York), and Hou's scrutiny of the films that inspired him explained how the films allowed him through his rebellious youth and made him the director he is today. Below is an edited and curated excerpt of the conversation.
About post-war European films, Exhausted, and the interaction with Yang Dechang
When I was younger, I often went to Yang Dechang's house with a group of directors. His house is Japanese, and we would sit around on tatami mats. We weren't actually young at the time, but as directors, we were still new, so we felt very fresh, very eager, very ambitious about the film that was about to be made.
Yang Dechang, Cai Qin, Hou Xiaoxian (from left to right)
The films we watched were made in different countries after World War II. Examples include Italian neorealist films, including The Bicycle Thief; France's Godard's Exhausted and François Truffaut's Four Hundred Blows; and Germany's new films by Reiner Werner Fassbinder. These are all movies that we will watch and discuss. Most of us are directors who have studied film abroad, but Yang Dechang is an exception, because he started out studying engineering and working in the computer industry, but then he gave up these jobs and turned to making films in Taiwan.
Exhausted (1960)
Exhausted certainly had a huge impact on my film The Man from the Wind Cabinet — we also watched it when I edited The Man from the Wind Cabinet with my collaborators. It inspired us to add jumps during editing, because in the past, the traditional way was to start with a long shot and end with a close-up. But here, in exactly the same position, you can use jumps to show the emotions of the characters and the story you want to tell.
The Man from the Wind Cabinet (1983)
About Yang Dechang's "The Murder on Muling Street" and watching the actors eat
When we were talking together about what we were going to shoot as directors, one thing we agreed on was that we were going to create our own stories from our own perspective, and we were going to tell reality. "The Murder on Muling Street" actually comes from Yang Dechang's own personal experience, plus a very sensational news story about this incident at that time. In this movie, you can see Zhang Zhen, the star of "Assassin Nie Yinniang". He was only 14 years old at the time and was already very handsome.
The Murders on Mulling Street (1994)
I've always wanted to make movies in a more realistic way. At the time, the actors — whether they were professional or non-professional — didn't perform the realistic way I had hoped. In order to do that, I had to create a real environment for them so they could immerse themselves in the characters and do what I wanted them to do. One of my favorite things for an actor to do is eat.
So if it's about eating, I'll shoot at the meal to make sure they're hungry. I would also arrange a banquet for them to eat freshly made food at the table. Then, when they're eating in their natural state, I remind them that the character is going through something very frustrating, something troubling to him or her, and then they'll make emotional adjustments while eating.
About Akio Naruse's "Floating Clouds" and sneaking into the movie theater
I chose this film because I'm familiar with the environment. I grew up in a Japanese-style house, mainly in terms of design and architectural style, and as you probably know, Taiwan was occupied by Japan for fifty years. So a lot of what I saw in Mikio's films was very familiar to me when I was growing up.
"Floating Clouds" is about what happened after World War II, when people were shrouded in despair. The story is so cold and at the same time so touching. As a director, Mikio excels at portraying how human emotional relationships change with society, and in this film, the film is set in a society of despair after World War II. These characters are portrayed so delicately and movingly on the screen.
Floating Clouds (1955)
Personally, when I was younger, I knew how to be smart and had a decent day. I gamble, I sell products, or I take them for granted. But even though I'm a rascal, I've always been passionate about literature and film, and I genuinely think it's these things that guide me so that I don't end up going astray. So I think movies and novels were my lifesaver and brought me where I am today.
You can't imagine how far I ran to see a movie growing up. I remember going to the cinema to see every movie that was released. I always find a way to blend in. When I was a kid, I would pretend to be someone else's kid – tugging on an adult shirt and pretending I was with them so I could get into the movie theater for free.
Later, after entering middle school, I grew much taller and could no longer pretend to be someone else's child and mix into the theater. So I would collect ticket stubs that were thrown on the ground, glue them up, and give them to the ticket inspector at the theater. Of course, they don't pay special attention to details, and I can get through with fake ticket stubs. Later, when I was in high school and college, I did something even more daring: climb over a fence or fence to see a movie.
About Fellini's Amarcord, and breaking the rules
I chose this film not only because it's a film about memories, but also because it's largely about this particular town — all the quirky characters — and the family. It had a huge impact on my films, like Once Upon a Time in Childhood, and it also inspired me to look back at my own upbringing and make films about it.
Childhood Memories (1985)
One thing I remember very clearly about this movie is that I was shooting The Man from the Wind Cabinet. During a fight, the protagonist picks up a brick and hits a person on the head, then leaves the left side of the frame. Then I asked him to turn around, pick up some sticks, and come back from the right side of the frame to continue the fight.
This idea of getting out of the frame and into the picture is something we shouldn't be doing; that's not what we learned in film school— you should be in and out of the same side of the frame. Fellini and his film, which really broke with the traditional way of shooting, taught me the freedom to do whatever I wanted, and it also allowed me to go beyond all those dogmatic ways of filmmaking that I learned in film school.
AmmaCord (1975)
The film had a huge impact on me, and I don't think contemporary directors would go through these things because they probably already had similar freedoms without having to follow those dogmas. But when I first started making movies, these golden rules were almost like the Bible, and I was just trying to break it.