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A Touch of Zen

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A Touch of Zen
Film poster
LiterallyHeroine woman
Directed byKing Hu
Written byKing Hu
Produced byHsia Wu Ling-fung
StarringHsu Feng
Shih Chun
Pai Ying
Roy Chiao
CinematographyHua Hui-ying
Edited byKing Hu
Wing Chin-chen
Music byWu Ta-chiang
Lo Ming-tao
Production
companies
Union Film
International Film Production
Distributed byUnion Film
Release date
  • November 18, 1971 (1971-11-18)
Running time
180 minutes
LanguageMandarin

A Touch of Zen is a 1971 wuxia film co-edited, written, and directed by King Hu. Its screenplay is based on a classic Chinese story Xiannv in the book Liaozhaizhiyi by Pu Songling. The film is set in the Ming dynasty under the dominance of Eunuches and narrates multiple themes of transcendence to dichotomies, Zen Buddhism, feminism, conservative female roles, and the ghost story. At the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, the film won the Technical Grand Prize award.

The film was produced in Taiwan and funded by the Union Film Company. Because the director Hu was a filmmaker in the Shaw Brothers Studio before moving to Taiwan, the emergence of the film established the international visibility of the Hong Kong New Wave. Although filming began in 1968, A Touch of Zen was not completed until 1971. The original Taiwanese release was in two parts in 1970 and 1971 (filming was still ongoing when the first part was released) with the bamboo forest sequence that concludes Part 1 reprised at the beginning of Part 2; this version has a combined run time of 200 minutes. In November 1971, both parts of the film were combined into one for the Hong Kong market with a run time of 187 minutes. Its running time of over three hours makes it an unusually epic entry in the wuxia genre.[1]

Plot

Set in a remote mountain village in Ming China, the 14th century AD.[a], the story is largely seen through the eyes of Gu, a well-meaning but unambitious scholar and painter, with a tendency towards being clumsy and ineffectual. A stranger arrives in town wanting his portrait painted by Gu, but his real objective is to bring a female fugitive back to the city for execution on behalf of the East Chamber guards. The fugitive, Yang, is befriended by Gu, and together they plot against the corrupt Eunuch Wei who wants to eradicate all trace of her family after her father attempts to warn the Emperor of the eunuch's corruption. His daughter fled, and Abbot Hui intervened to protect them.

The stranger, Yang, and her friends are all superior warriors. The stranger has a special flexible sword that bends and that he can wear within his belt, making him seem unarmed.

One of the unique aspects of the film is that Gu is a non-combatant all the way through the film and only becomes involved when he sleeps with Yang. Upon doing so, he is no longer the naïve bumbling innocent, but instead becomes confident and assertive, and when Yang's plight is revealed, he insists on being part of it – and even comes up with a fiendish "Ghost Trap" for the East Chamber guards. This is a plan to use a supposedly haunted site to play tricks on the guards to make them believe they are prey to the undead. He first spreads rumors of ghosts, with his mother playing a part. The film then briefly uses split-screen with six separate views to show the spread of these rumors.

In the aftermath, Gu walks through the carnage laughing at the ingenuity of his plan until the true cost of human life dawns upon him. He sees Abbot Hui and his followers arrive to help bury the dead.

After the battle, Gu is unable to find Yang, who he is told has left him and does not want him to follow her. He tracks her down at the monastery of the saintly and powerful Abbot Hui Yuan, where she has given birth to a child by Gu and become a nun. She tells Gu that their destiny together has ended and gives Gu their child. Later, when Gu and the child are tracked down by Hsu Hsien-Chen, the evil commander of Eunuch Wei's army, Yang and Abbot Hui come to Gu's rescue. In the ensuing battle, Hsu is killed and Yang and Abbot Hui are badly injured (the latter bleeding golden blood). The film famously ends with the injured Yang staggering towards a silhouetted figure, presumably, Abbot Hui, seen meditating with the setting sun forming a halo around his head, an image suggesting the Buddha and enlightenment.

Cast

  • Hsu Feng as Yang Hui-zhen (楊惠貞), the main protagonist, a female knight-errant.
  • Shih Chun (石雋; Shí Juàn) as Gu Sheng-tsai (顧省齋; Gù Shěngzhāi), a scholar and painter who later invoves in Jianghu.
  • Bai Ying (白鷹) as General Shi Wen-qiao (石問樵) who assists Yang to escape when disguising as a blind person
  • Xue Han (薛漢) as General Lu Ding-an (魯定庵) who protests Yang when disguising as a doctor of Traditional Chinese medicine
  • Roy Chiao as Abbot Hui-yuan (慧圆), the Chan monk
  • Tien Peng (田鵬) as Ouyang Nian (歐陽年) who works for the Eastern Depot
  • Cao Jian (曹健) as Xu Zheng-qing (徐正清), local magistrate
  • Zhang Bing-yu as Sheng-tsai's mother
  • Wang Rui as Men Da or Mun Ta (門達; Mén Dá)
  • Miao Tien as Nie Qiu (臬逑), one of Mun Ta's advisors
  • Han Ying-jie as Chief Commander Xu Xian-chun
  • Wan Zhong-shan (萬重山) as Lu Qiang (魯強)
  • Liu Chu as one of the Magistrate's men
  • Gao Ming as one of the Magistrate's men
  • Lu Zhi as Mun Ta's guard
  • Jia Lushi as Yang Lian, the protagonist Yang's father
  • Cheung Wen-men as Tao Lung
  • Jackie Chan (uncredited stuntman)[2]
  • Long Fei as a guard
  • Sammo Hung as guard/soldier

Production

Development

A Touch of Zen was shot in Taiwan by King Hu and was funded by the Taiwanese production company called Union Film Company.[3][4] In his book on the film, Stephen Teo suggested that the film suggested the film's roots in Hong Kong cinema, noting the bulk of both Taiwanese and Hong Kong actors and crew members.[3] With Hu’s idea of invoking traditional Chinese culture in his films, A Touch of Zen contains Beijing opera scores and references to Chinese poetry like Li Bai's well-known poem "Drinking Alone in the Moonlight”.[5]

One of the brilliant scenes, the bamboo forest sword fight is said to have taken twenty-five days to shoot the ten-minute confrontation. It is choreographed by Han Yingjie, a former Beijing opera actor and the action director of A Touch of Zen. Hu explained proudly of the trial and error he went through in the creative process and concluded that he had put together many scenes in less than eight frames challenging the “golden rule” of cinema.[6]

Adaptation

Hu based the screenplay of A Touch of Zen on the ghost story of Xia Nü in Liaozhai Zhiyi, an anthology by Pu Songling.[7] He arranged the credit of Liaozhai Zhiyi as the first title card right after the company logo in the film, even before the film title. In Pu Songling’s original story, the male scholar does not pursue being a knight-errant and the separation between wen and wu. However, the film modifies the character’s attributes and instead leads the scholar to adapt knight-errant and restore the country from the corrupted dominance of the eunuchs.[8][9]

Cinematography

Director Hu adopted the classic techniques of montages, including eye-line matches and shot-reverse-shot. He also used jump cuts to create the speed of motions in action effects and applied blocked shots as his signature on evacuating the space before actions take place. [10]Hu also creates “the glimpsing effect” (also called point-of-view shot) to provide a new perspective to audiences. “The glimpsing effect” allows the audience to see the perspective of Gu.[11]

Themes

Transcendence to Dichotomies

The function of knight-errantry alludes to civic values (wen) and marital conducts (wu) in the discourse, arising reflections of experiences and justice beyond dichotomies between wen and wu, good and evil.[12] The director Hu develops an individual perspective of what nation is and transcends the limited dialectics of a totalitarian regime versus a more benevolent government. [13]

Zen Buddhism

The theme of Buddhism is opposed to Confucianism and offers the ideas of transcendence and redemption.[14] Scholar James Steinstrage considers that the unambitious scholar Gu’s involvement in Jianghu and the unexplained motivation of Yang Huizhen’s sexual intercourse with Gu lead to absurdity and vacuity, which matches the concept of emptiness in Zen Buddhism.[15] Paradoxically, the Zen ideologies are not profound in the film and the translated film title A Touch of Zen can be a marketing strategy to attract Western audiences and recall exoticism.[16]

Feminism and Conservative Womanhood

The film presents Xia Nü Yang in the paradoxical image of female roles. She delivers a son to continue Gu’s family line as a traditional mother and help fulfill Gu’s filial piety, revealing the dominance of patriarchy in society. From a feminist perspective, she also has the initiative to end her relationship with Gu and reject the feudalistic values of women’s obligation to men.[17]

The Ghost Story

Based on the fact that Director Hu’s interests in a Chinese genre shengguai (which means gods and spirits), the haunted house as the setting and death traps jiguang suggest Gu’s encounters and ally with the supernatural ghosts.[18]The film adopts the motifs of “Liaozhai gothic”, including the goldenrod and alarm system that alerts the unexpected visitors in the haunted house. [19]

Scholar and Beauty

The film depicts the romantic relationships between a scholar Gu and a pretty female knight-errant Yang, referring to the classic theme of scholar and beauty Caizijiaren in Chinese literature.[20]

Reception

Box Office

A Touch of Zen went through a box-office failure when it was released in two installments in Taiwan in 1970 and 1971. The film only ran one week in the cinema and faced the failure because of its undesired themes of ambiguous sexuality and feminist sensibility.[21] In the same year of 1971, the film again failed to receive recognition with its release in Hong Kong due to the overwhelming success of Bruce Lee’s movie, The Big Boss. [22] It was not until the full three-hour version was revived for a screening at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival did A Touch of Zen gain wide attention.[23]

Review and Criticism

Gina Marchetti considers that the genre of the film as wuxia is a new emergence in the Hong Kong New Wave and writes,

“although produced in Taiwan after Hu had left Hong Kong, the international accolades for this film brought the “new” cinema of Hong Kong much greater visibility, while providing an art house alternative to the enormous international popularity of Bruce Lee” [24]


Author David Bordwell writes on The Criterion Collection,

“The story is simple, but the treatment is complex. No Shaw film would have delayed the basic exposition so cunningly. And no Shaw film would have presented heroic swordplay through the eyes of a secondary character. Yet by building the plot around Gu, Hu creates a protagonist-as-witness.”[25]


Scholar Héctor Rodríguez notes on the film,

“In that film...the director's use of elliptical cuts, diegetic insert shots, and other strategies of visual fragmentation allows characters to float magically through the air across long distances, to reach impossibly high altitudes in a single superhuman leap, and to change direction miraculously in midair.”[26]


Scholar Stephen Teo writes that,

“This final reduction of the mythical female knight-errant figure into human status is meant to provoke us into a philosophical understanding of ourselves. The subject of Buddhist transcendence is Hu’s way of delivering the ultimate critique of the genre’s raison d’être which is the audience’s wish-fulfilment for heroes to save them from their own vulnerability.”[27]

"Wei Yi criticizes that the film part 1 and part 2 do not add up as a whole film because of the stiff tail section. Audiences need to be acknowledged Zen in order to understand the Zen theme in the film."[28]

Accolades

The film was awarded the Technical Grand Prize and nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival.[29] It became the first Chinese-language film to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival and the first wuxia film to win at an international film festival.[3]

At the 24th Hong Kong Film Awards various Asian film critics, filmmakers and actors voted for the top Chinese films from Hong Kong, Taiwan and China.[30] A Touch of Zen was listed at 9th place on the list. In 2011, the Tapei Golden Horse Film Festival had 122 industry professionals take part in the survey.[31]The voters included film scholars, festival programmers, film directors, actors and producers to vote for the 100 Greatest Chinese-Language Films.[31] A Touch of Zen was listed at 15th place on the list.[31]

Home media

A Touch of Zen was released on DVD for the North American market on December 10, 2002 by Tai Seng Entertainment, with only King Hu's biography and filmography as extras.[32] The film was also released on PAL DVD for the British market on July 28, 2003 by Optimum Releasing (now StudioCanal UK), as well as for the German market on April 10, 2008 by KSM GmbH as part of their "King Hu Collection".[33][34] The film was released on PAL DVD in France on September 1, 2004 as simply Touch of Zen by Films sans Frontières (Films Without Borders), which has both French and English subtitles.[35][36]

After the film's 4K restoration in 2015, the film's first Blu-ray release was by Eureka Entertainment for the Masters of Cinema series, released on January 25, 2016 for the British market, which also includes a DVD edition of the film. Both editions include a select scene commentary by critic Tony Rayns, the film's theatrical trailer, and newly translated English subtitles, as well as a 36-page booklet which features director King Hu's statement from the 1975 Cannes Film Festival, a 1975 interview with the director by Rayns, the short story the film was based on, eight characteristics of "the swordswoman" in King Hu's films, and archival images. A limited-edition version of the Blu-ray and DVD adds a 2012 documentary about King Hu and a new essay by filmmaker David Cairns.[37]

On July 19, 2016, American home video company The Criterion Collection released the film on Blu-ray and DVD using the same 4K restoration also used by the Masters of Cinema release. Both the Blu-ray and DVD include the 2012 documentary about King Hu, new interviews with the actors Hsu Feng and Shih Chun, filmmaker Ang Lee, and film scholar Tony Rayns, the theatrical 4K re-release trailer, and newly translated English subtitles, as well as a leaflet containing a new essay by film critic and theorist David Bordwell and King Hu's notes from the 1975 Cannes Film Festival. The new Blu-ray and DVD cover and interior poster (combined with the leaflet) was illustrated by Greg Ruth and designed by Eric Skillman.[38][39]

Sources

  1. ^ Teo, Stephen (2007). King Hu's A Touch of Zen. Hong Kong University Press. p. 8. ISBN 978-962-209-815-2.
  2. ^ Teo, Stephen (1 November 2006). "King Hu's A Touch of Zen". Hong Kong University Press – via Google Books.
  3. ^ a b c Teo 2006, p. 2. sfn error: multiple targets (9×): CITEREFTeo2006 (help)
  4. ^ "A Touch of Zen" (PDF). Cannes Film Festival. Retrieved 30 November 2017.
  5. ^ Rodriguez, Hector (1998). "Questions of Chinese Aesthetics: Film Form and Narrative Space in the Cinema of King Hu". Cinema Journal. 38 (1): 79. doi:10.2307/1225736.
  6. ^ Rodriguez, Hector (1998). "Questions of Chinese Aesthetics: Film Form and Narrative Space in the Cinema of King Hu". Cinema Journal. 38 (1): 87. doi:10.2307/1225736.
  7. ^ Teo, Stephen (2006). King Hu's A Touch of Zen. Hong Kong University Press. p. 17. ISBN 978-962-209-815-2.
  8. ^ Teo, Stephen (2007). "History, Nation and Politics in King Hu's Dragon Gate Inn and A Touch of Zen". Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese. 8 (1): 125.
  9. ^ Teo, Stephen (2006). King Hu's A Touch of Zen. Hong Kong University Press. p. 20. ISBN 978-962-209-815-2.
  10. ^ Steinstrage, James (2014). "The Thirdness of King Hu: Wuxia, Deluze, and the cinmea of paradox". Journal of Chinese Cinema. 8 (2): 107–8.
  11. ^ Teo, Stephen (2006). "Seduction and Politics, Fight and Flight.". King Hu's A Touch of Zen. Hong Kong University Press. p. 51-76. ISBN 9789888052486.
  12. ^ Teo, Stephen (2009). "The Wuxia Films of King Hu". Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. 130. ISBN 978-0-7486-3251-0.
  13. ^ Teo, Stephen (2007). "History, Nation and Politics in King Hu's Dragon Gate Inn and A Touch of Zen". Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese. 8 (1): 129.
  14. ^ Teo, Stephen (2006). "Conclusion.". King Hu's A Touch of Zen. Hong Kong University Press. p. 108-109. ISBN 9789888052486.
  15. ^ Steinstrage, James (2014). "The Thirdness of King Hu: Wuxia, Deleuze, and the cinema of paradox". Journal of Chinese Cinema. 8 (2): 105–7.
  16. ^ Steinstrage, James (2014). "The Thirdness of King Hu: Wuxia, Deleuze, and the cinema of paradox". Journal of Chinese Cinema. 8 (2): 104.
  17. ^ Teo, Stephen (2007). "History, Nation and Politics in King Hu's Dragon Gate Inn and A Touch of Zen". Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese. 8 (1): 128.
  18. ^ Teo, Stephen (2006). "Ghosts and the Desire to See". King Hu's A Touch of Zen. Hong Kong University Press. p. 29. ISBN 9789888052486.
  19. ^ Teo, Stephen (2006). "Ghosts and the Desire to See". King Hu's A Touch of Zen. Hong Kong University Press. p. 36. ISBN 9789888052486.
  20. ^ Teo, Stephen (2009). "The Wuxia Films of King Hu". Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Unviersity Press. p. 128. ISBN 978-0-7486-3251-0.
  21. ^ Teo, Stephen (2006). "Introduction.". King Hu's A Touch of Zen. Hong Kong University Press. p. 1-16. ISBN 9789888052486.
  22. ^ Teo, Stephen (2009). Chinese Martial Arts Cinema: The Wuxia Tradition. Edinburgh University Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-7486-3285-5.
  23. ^ Bordwell, David. "A Touch of Zen: Prowling, Scheming, Flying". The Criterion Collection.
  24. ^ Marchetti, Gina (2012). "The Hong Kong New Wave". A Companion to Chinese cinema. p. 95. doi:10.1002/9781444355994.ch6. ISBN 1-4443-3029-2.
  25. ^ Bordwell, David. "A Touch of Zen: Prowling, Scheming, Flying". The Criterion Collection.
  26. ^ Rodriguez, Hector (1998). "Questions of Chinese Aesthetics: Film Form and Narrative Space in the Cinema of King Hu". Cinema Journal. 38 (1): 87. doi:10.2307/1225736.
  27. ^ Teo, Stephen (2009-03-31), "The Wuxia Films of King Hu", Chinese Martial Arts Cinema, Edinburgh University Press, pp. 115–140, doi:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748632855.003.0006, ISBN 978-0-7486-3285-5 {{citation}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  28. ^ Teo, Stephen (2006). "The Battle of the Haunted Mansion.". King Hu's A Touch of Zen. Hong Kong University Press. p. 77-90. ISBN 9789888052486.
  29. ^ "Festival de Cannes: A Touch of Zen". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-05-04.
  30. ^ "[最佳華語片一百部] The Best 100 Chinese Motion Pictures(in Chinese)". Hong Kong Film Award. Retrieved June 14, 2016.
  31. ^ a b c "Horse announces greatest Chinese films". Film Business Asia. 27 January 2011. Retrieved November 4, 2015.
  32. ^ Wallis, J. Doyle (24 December 2002). "A Touch of Zen : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video". DVD Talk. DVDTalk.com. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
  33. ^ "A Touch Of Zen (Xia Nu) 1971 [DVD] [1969]". Amazon.co.uk. Amazon.com, Inc. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
  34. ^ "Ein Hauch von Zen (Director's Cut)". Amazon.de (in German). Amazon.com, Inc. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
  35. ^ "TOUCH OF ZEN, film réalisé par King Hu". Films sans frontières (in French). Films sans frontières. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
  36. ^ "Touch of Zen [Version intégrale]". Amazon.fr (in French). Amazon.com, Inc. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
  37. ^ "A Touch of Zen". Masters of Cinema | Eureka. Bensons World. Archived from the original on 1 April 2016. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
  38. ^ "A Touch of Zen (1971)". The Criterion Collection. The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 21 July 2016.
  39. ^ Greg Ruth [@GregRuth] (16 April 2016). "My movie poster for @Criterion's release of A TOUCH OF ZEN is here! @janusfilms thx to the brilliant @EricSkillman!" (Tweet). Retrieved 21 July 2016 – via Twitter.


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