Apr 04, 2003 05:34 PM
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(Updated Apr 04, 2003 05:34 PM)
HERO - No I ain't talkin bout the new movie starring sunny deol and preity zinta with sunny baba in different weirdo getups. Rather I am talking about the movie ''THE HERO'' which is a chinese movie. To be more specific I am gonna talk about its trailer only coz I don't even know if the movie's been released as yet or not. The only things which are available are the wallpapers and a 10 MB trailer which I took pains to download after I read about the movie in ''THE HINDU''. For those of you who remember the immensely successfull ''Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon'' will really smile and ur hearts will lighten at the thought of this movie ''THE HERO''.
Many of you must have scoffed and laughed away C.T.H.D. as being too unrealistic and fairy-taleish due to the unbelievable stunts like walking on water, fighting on nimble tree branches, and flying over rooftops etc. For such people I have a question - how do u know that such things don't exist ? There are so many secrets of the forbidden city and Shaolin temple in China that most of us can't even imagine. Why even our old indian fighting style from the backwaters of kerala ''Kaliyarapattu'' has many intricate fighting styles that most of can't even comprehend. To learn or even get to know about these one has to be a disciple of the respective art from childhood. Same applies to the fighting styles of ''Sikhs'' in our country. In the same way China has its ''wuxia'' and ''wudan'' styles of fighting. If one were to enter one of these fighting temples from the age of say 5 or 6 one would be able to learn to appreciate these styles of fighting and even become a master of sorts at them. I am calling them temples coz thats what they truly are. These arts first have to be understood, then worshipped with true reverence and then maybe tried a hand at under the wilfull guidance of a master.
In fact we should be grateful to these movies like ''Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon'' and ''THE HERO'' that such ancient and secret fighting arts were at least brought into the mainstream and we mere mortals got a chance to catch a glimpse of these arts, otherwise we would still be living in concrete and steel world of skyscrapers and tanks and guns. What we tend to forget is that the human body in itself is an amazing machine which has amazing capabilities. Sir Albert Einstein himself said that for the whole duration of our lives we utilize at the most 7.5% or something of our brains capabilities. Those who are able to work their minds harder and able to utilise like say even at least 25 to 30% are termed as geniuses. So think what would happen if we were to utilise 100% of our mind's abilities.
According to the chinese wuxia fighters, the same applies to out whole body. We have such secret reserves of energy, strength and speed in our body that we aren't even aware of. To tap these resources efficiently it requires years of patience and learning. I think I've built enough of a backdrop for the movie.
Now coming to the trailer, its even more impressive than Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Where C.T.H.D. was full of grey and white and pastel shades , THE HERO is full of bright and vibrant colors. One scene in particularly has a male fighter in green robes in combat with a female warrior in bright crimson robes amongst trees in the autumn season with the yellowed dead leaves falling amongst them as they fight. Its really beautiful to fight. One more aspect which C.T.H.D. touched a little was ''calligraphy''. C.T.H.D. focused more attention on swordplay and stunts and fighting . Here THE HERO begs to differ as calligraphy is supposed to be a very important art of reading and writing scriptures in ancient China. Even though I tried I couldn't find out too much about this encrypting technique. Seems like its even a deeper secret than I thought. Anyways calligraphy plays an important part in the movie. There's one particular scene where there's a calligraphy school and a class is in progress and a master is teaching his disciples to calligraph under the watchful eyes of three warriors as an attack by the enemy is impending. And then the enemy scale the building and from the roof start firing arrows at class. At first the students panic but then the teacher then tells them to continue writing and drawing, while he instructs the 3 warriors to defend the school. The warriors rush to the roof and fend of all the arrows with just their swords, such is their speed. Then after defending the enemy , when they come back to the class, one of the warriors comment ''Great Calligraphy'', upon which the teacher says ''Great Calligraphy''. At this the warriors are surprised and ask him '' How did you know that we fought well when you were inside the building and didn't even see us ?'' At this the teacher replies '' If you hadn't displayed great swordplay then we wouldn't have been able to demonstrate great calligraphy''. Such small things make this movie a visual and pondering delight. The movie stars international action star ''Jet Li'' as ''nameless'', Cannes film festival winner ''Tony Leung Chiu Wai'' as ''Broken Sword'', Silver Berlin Bear Winner ''Maggie Cheung Man Yuk'' as ''Flying Snow'' and British Academy Award Nominee ''Zhang Ziyi'' as another warrior whose name I couldn't find out.
Most of us would remember Zhang Ziyi as the young girl warrior ''Jen'' from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. If any of you want to download the trailer then just go to https://google.com and search for ''download hero movie trailer wuxia'' . thats what I did. the last word wuxia is important because thats a keyword and will refer to this movie only. otherwise you might end up with a lot of garbage results. the trailer is in quick time format and is about a 9.8 MB file. Go for it. Now I am waiting for the movie to release and surely it will deserve a special place in my VCD collection. luvnhugs, ashvyn
