By N. P Thompson
Perhaps three-quarters of the way into Zhang Yimou’s rigorous Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, it occurred to me how daring it is for Zhang to make a film so different from any of his recent work. His trademark themes are here: an improbable journey, family obligations kept at any cost. I think the back-to-back action pictures he made, Hero and House of Flying Daggers, burned away the dross of excessive sentimentality that defined The Road Home and Not One Less. Riding Alone functions as a comedy of errors, yet the movie cuts much deeper than that subgenre typically allows, because the things that go wrong are so tied up in the emotional pain of the characters.
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To read the rest of the Northwest Asian Weekly review, click here. N.P. Thompson's recent articles for The House Next Door include a profile of screenwriter Stewart Stern and a review of Laurent Cantet's Heading South. For more writing by Thompson, visit his website Movies Into Film.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Locked in isolation: Zhang Yimou's Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
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3 comments:
I can't wait for the chance to see this. Zhang Yimou is one of my favorite directors and his recent venture into action really disappointed me. Glad to see he's returning to stories about people instead of stunts.
Your review has me excited about this film, N.P. Zhang Yimou's filmography, compared to other current directors, is second to none, though I must admit being pretty disappointed with Hero (enough to avoid House of Flying Daggers). And the film he did before those - Happy Times was just dripping with the sentimentality in Not One Less & Road Home. The lack of that sentimentality, as you described, along with the comic elements, reminds me of his earlier films like Qiu Ju.
Since it's difficult for directors to do a film in a second language, and since Odie tore apart Gong Li's english in Miami Vice (I didn't see that one, but thought she was good in Geisha) I'd be curious to see how this movie will play in Japan.
A fine, lovely film. Most impressively, it’s not merely a throwback to Zhang’s previous quest movies, despite sharing so many of their trappings. There is an epic scope to this very intimate story, from the gray frigidity of Japan’s coast to the golden serenity of the mountain before which Takata uses his bladder as an excuse to grieve in private. I can’t think of another director (OK, Altman, and possibly Wong Kar-Wai) who is not only so varied in his output but who constantly reapplies the lessons from his previous efforts, making his career all of a piece despite its seeming diversity. The shot of Takata hugging Yang Yang goodbye, they so sharply foregrounded against a distant mountain and clouds that dwarf in perspective beside the human figures, wouldn’t have been out of place in either of the two rousing action films that preceded this in the director’s oeuvre. Even the casting of Ken Takakura, veteran of several Yakuza and Samurai features, reinforces the continuity between Zhang’s “art” films and popular cinema that has been evident since JUDOU. (At least to American audiences; I’ve never seen OPERATION COUGAR.)
In other words, watch out for his next one, Edward and Jeffrey. CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER has Chow Yun-Fat and INITIAL D’S own Jay Chou facing off (with Zhang perennial Gong Li as well) in another large-scale wuxia fantasia.
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