LGM Film Club, Part 444: The Assassin

Because I curate my film watching pretty carefully, I usually end up liking the films I watch. But it’s always useful to discuss a film I didn’t care for much. This leads us to Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s 2015 attempt to combine a wuxia film with his trademark slow and quiet filmmaking, The Assassin. Now, I was never a big fan of the so-called Taiwanese New Wave (I really hate how every time a good set of films comes from some new place, it’s a “new wave,” as if the goddamn cheeseeating surrender monkeys invented good films in the early 60s), because it felt to me like Hou and other directors were mistaking “extremely slow” for interesting and good. But I was curious to see what he would do with a wuxia film. The answer was to make it really boring while not solving the usual problems of wuxia films like incomprehensible plots. At least those films are fun and nonsensical with cool ass fight scenes. This is boring and nonsensical, with a few good fight scenes but not enough to make up for the rest of it. The theoretical story is a rich noble girl who was sent off to a nun who trained her to be a cold heartless assassin. But then she can’t kill a guy because his son is around. So she is sent to kill the man she was formerly meant to be married to before her exile. Then there are various factions and such that aren’t really explained.

Yes, it is beautifully filmed. But what high budget Asian film set in the past in the last half-century isn’t awash in color? Ever since Ran, this is just par for the course and like cinematographers winning Academy Awards for their westerns for fairly easy shots of waving grasses in the open spaces filmed 45 minutes before sunset in gorgeous light, using tons of color is substituting for innovation. You want a good cinematography challenge? Make an apartment look interesting.