Sometimes you just need to throw out the expectations provided by the conventionalities of film–plot, developed story arc, action itself. With the Assassin, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s wuxia that was seven years in the making, a master of extreme craftsmanship throws the martial arts film on its head. The result is so beautiful to watch, you may forget you are in a movie theater. Hou constructs every scene like it was his last.
The one word that would describe his technique besides gorgeous is quiet–quite the oddity for this genre. Yet when the “action” does come, it’s so sudden and jarring, it positively stuns. That this is the most unusual martial arts film to be encountered is almost besides the point. Hou’s action, while uniquely gripping, is almost incidental to his atmospheric rendering of an epoch, a mindset, a tradition.
Hie Yinniang (an excellent Shu Qi) has finished her training with her fellow female mentor and now must perform a harrowing feat. She is instructed to kill her own cousin, Tian Ji’an (Chen Chang),to whom, incidentally, she was once betrothed. It all has to do with a rebellious province set on seceding from the royal power. Yinniang will come to display a more profound sense of self than is at first imaginable, but not before she handles many trials and tribulations along the way.
Talking about plot with Hou is like talking about the play at the Ford’s Theater the night John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln. What’s at work with Hou can only be experienced. With no guarantees that you’ll find this unique approach to filmmaking engaging, you nonetheless owe it to yourself to check him out if you consider yourself a film buff. The Taiwanese Hou, who has been wowing film festival audiences and highbrow critics for three decades, is one of our very most talented directors and to say he deserves an audience is an understatement.