House of Flying Daggers

LINKS
—Overview
—Review by Darrel Manson
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film pdf
—Spiritual Connections

Sometimes you can watch a well-made film and acknowledge its greatness, but never really personally resonate with it; other times you can watch a trite or silly film, acknowledge its silliness, but come away loving the film despite its flaws. I watched House of Flying Daggers and came away acknowledging the greatness and clicking with it on every level. Isn’t that a rare and wonderful experience with a film?

As often happens with foreign films, we have several other films to thank for clearing the way for this film to reach the U.S. Sony Pictures Classics saw fit to distribute Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers undoubtedly because his last film Hero, starring Jet Li, was a box office hit here. In turn, both those films can thank Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for opening our minds to the fantastic, mythological Kung Fu epic. Yet Yimou’s new film takes this genre to a new level of quality. The scale is epic, but the characters are intimately studied. The martial arts are enthralling, but never eclipse the story or the meaning of the film, leaving the meaning of the film more accessible to the viewer than in the other two films.

House of Flying Daggers seems to be, above all else, a tale about the absurdity of love. It will be difficult to discuss this theme without revealing plot details. But the film also has a few twists of intrigue that can’t be revealed without ruining the impact. The plot revolves around a passionate love affair, and the consequences of that love. In the end, just about every decision that is made by a character is desperate, almost silly, but made entirely in the context of a point of view or a feeling about love.

The film begins by introducing us to two rival organizations, the House of Flying Daggers, a group of “Robin Hood� style gangsters, and the government team that is assigned to destroy and dismantle the Flying Daggers. The Flying Daggers are represented by Zhang Ziyi’s character Mei, and the government forces who are trying to stop them are represented by Takeshi Kaneshiro as Jin, and Andy Lao as Leo. The story quickly focuses in on these three main characters, and the scale of the film shifts from politically epic, to romantically epic, finally concluding with only the resolution of the love triangle, and an open-ended assumption of what happened with the two rival political organizations. The meaning found there is that, to these characters, the only thing that mattered was their love, and the political importance of their decisions fell by the wayside in the wake of their absurd need for love.

This absurd love is a theme that can resonate with any viewer living on this particular planet! Who has never felt an irrational desire, or who has never made a conventionally unwise decision because of feelings for another person? And on the other hand, who can say he or she totally understands or grasps the profound depths of what it means to have love, or to be in love? One of the most remarkable things about true love is its absurdity. Take even the ultimate act of love mankind has seen: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.� (John 3:16) What an absurd notion! Why would God so love anything so deeply as to sacrifice His only son? Why would Jesus then love us so much that He would allow His own crucifixion? It is essentially an unanswerable question. We can never know just why God loves us so much as to die for us, and to resurrect us with Him.

On a human level, which House of Flying Daggers gives us, we understand that love is perceived differently by just about everyone. To some characters, their desire equals love. To others, sacrifice is equivalent to love. But on this human level, the characters ultimately make absurd decisions that are equally part selfish and part sacrificial. The absurdity of God’s love for us is different, for He unquestionably gives so much more than we can ever give, whereas the human love of this film is muddled and filled with hurt and uncertainty, God’s absurd love for mankind is selfless, and He loves with terrible clarity and resolve.

LINKS
—Overview
—Review by Darrel Manson
—Trailers, Photos
—About this Film pdf
—Spiritual Connections