Director: Zhang Yimou

Writer: Zhang Yimou

Cast: Deng Chao, Sun Li, Ryan Zheng Kai, Leo Wu, Wang Qianyuan, Hu Jun, Guan Xiaotong

Running Time: 116 min.

By Paul Bramhall

In a year that saw the Chinese film industry more concerned with ensuring its finances where in order than it was with actually making any films (thanks Fan Bingbing!), fifth generation director Zhang Yimou’s latest production Shadow arrived in a decidedly understated manner, with little fanfare or promotion. It’s been 30 years since the world was introduced to Yimou’s distinct style with 1987’s Red Sorghum, however for many western audiences their introduction would have been through his 2002 wuxia epic Hero. Made at a time when foreign audiences were still very much receptive to flying swordsman and chivalrous musings, thanks to 2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the blending of Yimou’s eye for luscious visuals applied to the wuxia genre was a stunning one.

The success of Hero saw the director stay within the world of wuxia for his next 2 features, with 2004’s House of Flying Daggers and 2006’s Curse of the Golden Flower making what would become known as his Wuxia Trilogy. Now after 12 years, Shadow makes the first time for Yimou to return to the wuxia genre. In the time in-between he’s directed the opening and closing ceremony for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, dabbled in the war genre (2011’s The Flowers of War), romantic melodrama (2014’s Coming Home), and of course, most recently Matt Damon versus monsters in 2016’s The Great Wall. Perhaps most notably though, is that Shadow also sees the auteur responsible for the script, for the first time since Curse of the Golden Flower.

It seems to make a difference when Yimou is directing from his own pen, as Shadow is a classical return to form to his early – mid 2000’s work, striking the balance between sumptuous visuals and an enthralling story. Indeed the whole aesthetic calls to mind a Chinese oil painting which has been brought to life, with a charcoal hued palette that eschews the glowing red lanterns and luscious greenery of his most famous work. While the ranges of colors may have been muted, what’s onscreen is no less beautiful, with the permanently rain soaked landscapes and palace interiors that the plot takes place in, captured in such a way that every detail of the production design feels like a deliberate brushstroke.

Shadow opens with onscreen text, explaining how, in ancient China certain high ranking military officials secretly trained a double – a commoner chosen because of their resemblance, so that should anything ever happen to the real official that could destabilize the palace, the double (or ‘shadow’) could take over. Shadow is the story of one such commoner. Using the revered Three Kingdoms saga as its inspiration, there’s unrest in the palace when a powerful adversary captures a strategically important city nearby. A respected Commander (Deng Chao, The Mermaid), insists they must fight to regain control of the city, however the cowardly king (Zheng Kai, Peace Breaker) would rather maintain the peace, even going to far as to offer his sister (Guan Xiao-Tong, The Guillotines) to marry the son of the adversaries leader.

Unwilling to accept the kings proposal, Chao arranges for a one-on-one duel with the leader of the opposing forces, a General who’s known to be unbeatable with a guandao (Hu Jun, Red Cliff). However there’s a catch – Chao isn’t really the Commander, as the real Commander already fought with Jun previously, and suffered debilitating injuries which have forced him into hiding inside the palace’s secret chambers. The real Commander (also played by Chao), through closely collaborating with both his wife (Sun Li, Fearless) and his double, have colluded to have his shadow successfully take his place in court. So the stage is set for a tale with stakes which feel on one hand intimate and personal, while on the other epic and far reaching, often both at the same time.

Shadow explores a lot of territory within its ticking clock framework to the shadows duel with a superior opposition. On the surface is the basic need for the real Commander to develop a strategy that can defeat the deadly thrusts of Jun’s guandao, however Yimou’s storytelling is equally interested in the dynamic between the trio who are central to the plot. With a weakened military commander whose thoughts grow increasingly ambitious, a double wrestling with his own insecurities, and a wife who finds herself spending more time with her husband’s surrogate than the man she married, loyalties soon start to grow fractured. Yimou develops an underlying tension into proceedings, which creeps in so quietly you don’t notice it until it’s already there, as the question arises to if the king has noticed his trusted commander isn’t the same one he was speaking to before.

Tonally there are echoes of Hero that reverberate through certain moments in Shadow. While in the former Jet Li played a character simply referenced as ‘Nameless’, here the shadow may be just as much lacking an identify, however as the audience we get to know both his name and his backstory, providing us with more details than many of the characters he interacts with care to know about. It’s these details which allow the viewer an understanding into the events that unfold, and the reasoning behind them, making Yimou’s latest an intriguing study into the follies of human nature.

Like his famed Wuxia Trilogy, Yimou doesn’t neglect the action, bringing on board action director Ku Huen-Chiu (who also worked on fellow fifth generation alumni Chen Kaige’s Monk Comes Down the Mountain) to craft some of the most beautifully shot action scenes in recent memory. Heavily incorporating the principles of yin-yang, even the smallest action sequence is a feast for the eyes and ears, as bamboo poles cut through the rain drenched surface in slow motion, and arrows slice through the air towards their targets. There’s a distinct nod to the Shaw Brothers movies of old, specifically 1978’s The Flying Guillotine Part II, with the introduction of a bladed umbrella to defeat the opposing armies style, and the way they’re incorporated into a siege on the town is like nothing you’ll have seen in martial arts cinema before.

The real joy for martial arts fans though will be the way in which strategy and technique plays a crucial part of the action. Yimou opts for an action aesthetic which is more in line with the grounded displays seen in Curse of the Golden Flower, than the flights of fancy found in Hero, allowing the permanent downpour to play as much a part in the bloodletting as the blood that runs through it. The esoteric weapons, and realisation that a more feminine style of fighting is the best way to defeat the enemy, mean that the action still remains highly stylised, but the sense of danger is never sacrificed. With the elaborate costumes allowing for every thrust of the blade to look like poetry in motion, Yimou’s work as a cinematographer shows through in every frame, a timely reminder that a minimalist approach can be just as enthralling as a million CGI pixels splattered all over the screen.

For every question that Shadow poses, none of them have an easy answer, with every end only signalling a beginning to another power struggle, whether it be between kingdoms, or a man and a woman. While some audiences were turned off by what they saw as Hero’s pro-China message (it’d be interesting to see what those same audiences think of some of China’s output now!), Shadow appears to opt for a different approach, instead subtly pointing out that the more you try to control someone, the more you’re destined to fail. Whatever the case, Yimou concludes his latest by leaving us to figure out what that means to the wider world, and each viewer may have a different perspective. Put simply, Yimou’s return to the wuxia genre is a resounding triumph, respecting the influence of the past while also setting the bar for the future, Shadow is pure cinema.

Paul Bramhall’s Rating: 9/10