Legend of the Black Scorpion Blu-ray Review
Wuxia or not wuxia, that is the question.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, October 25, 2010
When
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon took the movie going world by storm in 2000, suddenly it was if the floodgates had been opened, and we were suddenly awash in films about feudal Asian times filled with wire dancing martial artists. Many, if not most, of these films usually get lumped together under the
wuxia rubric, the Chinese fiction idiom dealing with martial arts, though a close reading of that term would really probably eliminate at least some of them. But anyone who's seen
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or any of the many films which followed in its wake, pretty much knows what to expect going into one of these endeavors, whether or not it
really fits into a strict definition of
wuxia. Heroes and villains are more often than not extremely broadly drawn, sets (and set pieces) are often grandiose, and there is usually a very evocative use of location shooting in authentically Chinese locales like bamboo forests. And, of course, there's the amazing fight choreography, with antagonists leaping, flying and otherwise defying gravity in a sort of giddy martial arts version of the dance sequences that used to litter classic Hollywood musicals.
Legend of the Black Scorpion was originally titled
The Banquet when it was released in 2006, and that in fact is probably a better title for it.
Scorpion may have been retitled to trade on the popularity of its sort of sibling film,
Curse of the Golden Dragon, a film which was actually released a couple of months after
The Banquet, but which, for reasons probably best attributed to the vagaries of popular culture, took off stateside more than
The Banquet initially did. (It's interesting to note that Hong Kong submitted
The Banquet as its nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film for the 2006 Oscars, while "mainland" China did the same for
Golden Flower, but neither film ended up in the five finalist positions).
The Banquet and
Golden Flower both defy traditional
wuxia expectations in at least a couple of notable ways. Both films don't really deal with an impoverished class fighting against a ruling elite. Instead, both films deal with palace intrigue
within the ruling elite. And neither film really relies on huge wire-laden fight sequences, though each film certainly does feature that element. Both
The Banquet and
Golden Flower offer at times mind boggling production design, and indeed the main palace set for
The Banquet was evidently the largest single set ever built for a Chinese film, according to commentator Bey Logan. What may
really set
The Banquet apart from most films of this ilk, however, is its source material. Like
Golden Flower,
The Banquet is based on a famous play. Unlike
Golden Flower, whose source material was a 1930s effort probably little known outside of its native land, most people have probably heard of
The Banquet's inspiration: it's a little piece called
Hamlet by a guy named William Shakespeare.
In this reworking, our "melancholy Dane" is a young Chinese prince in the 10th century, Wu Luan (Daniel Lu). The film opens with a stunning sequence where Wu Luan, who has removed himself from all of the court intrigue after his childhood love is betrothed to his father, is engaging in a sort of ritual theatrical performance in a bamboo forest. Unlike
Hamlet, Wu Luan doesn't have a conniving mother. He instead has a conniving
step-mother, Empress Wan (Ziyi Zhang), who is, of course, that childhood love kept from Wu Luan. It is at least hinted at that Wan and Wu Luan have had an intimate relationship at some point in their distant past. Wan has helped to murder her husband, Wu Luan's father, and has taken up with the dead Emperor's brother, Li (You Ge), who has assumed the emperor's mantle and is planning an official wedding to his former sister-in-law. Since Wu Luan is the crown prince, Li plots to have him assassinated, so as to remove any chance of a usurper claiming rightful inheritance of the throne. Wu Luan manages to escape the killers who show up at the outdoor amphitheatre, in one of the film's iconic set pieces, and returns to the palace to seek revenge.
The Banquet is thus considerably more complex than some
wuxia outings, and that is nowhere more apparent than in the character of Empress Wan, whom Ziyi Zhang brings fully alive in an absolutely astounding performance. The audience is frequently unsure of exactly what to think of this character, and it plays into the subtle subterfuge which shadows most of this film. Is Wan a victim herself? Is she a devious murderess? Is she hopelessly in love with a young man who, through no fault of her own, ended up as her stepson? Is she also insanely jealous, out to make sure if she can't have Wu Luan, no one can. In at least some measure, the answer to these questions is "all of the above." Wan is one of the most devilishly complicated female characters to ever inhabit a
wuxia, or even a quasi-
wuxia, film, and she is certainly a much more convoluted offering than Gertrude in
Hamlet is.
Much like
Curse of the Golden Flower,
The Banquet may be too slow moving for those who want their flying martial arts sequences fast and furious. But that very stately rhythm actually is one of
The Banquet's subtly effective mechanisms. The slow procession of courtly life seems calm on the surface, but just barely underneath passions and plots are roiling to calamitous conclusions. Director Feng Xiaogang, who prior to
The Banquet was best known in China for his comedies, here stages an incredibly sumptuous film that brilliantly captures the pomp and circumstance of a long bygone age. Feng also handles his actors intelligently and with a great deal of restraint. While that may make some of the performances near ciphers (with or without attendant masks, which come into play), the surface stoicism again covers a tempestuous emotional undercurrent which is quietly palpable.
Two Oscar winners from
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon do exceptional work here on
The Banquet, art director Timmy Yip and composer Tan Dun. Yip's production design is nothing less than amazing, and though Dun doesn't really exploit native instruments the way he has done in other scores of his, he provides a lush and compelling underscore. Fight director Yuen Woo-ping (
The Matrix) contributes some brilliantly choreographed moments, especially the grand sequence at the theatre in the bamboo forest, which has a number of really amazing elements.
Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet contains the immortal line, "A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet." Why American marketers chose to rebrand
The Banquet as
Legend of the Black Scorpion is anyone's guess, but the good news is, by whatever title it's know, it's a compelling and very beautiful film. Give
The Banquet time to work its devious spell on you, and you'll come away thinking, "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't."
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