The only problem with 2018 being such an amazing year for movies is that 2019 has been disappointing in comparison until Shadow. It may be too early in the year to declare any movie a frontrunner, but Shadow is definitely a strong contender, which isn’t a surprise since filmmaking legend Zhang Yimou directed it.
Yimou has been doing basically perfect work since the late 1980s. There were some concerns that once Hong Kong became part of China again, the change in political climate would affect his work, and maybe it has, but you can’t tell from looking at his films. Unlike his American counterparts, he hasn’t lost a step with age. I was a faithful follower when I was in college where it was easy to have access to his films on VHS, but it was harder to keep up with his work because foreign films aren’t marketed as heavily, and I was in survival mode. You have to be eternally vigilant and monitor movie releases weekly to know what is in theaters. A foreign film may never come to your theater or only have a limited release. I have a lot of catching up to do. It is long overdue, but I think that Shadow is the first film of Yimou’s that I saw on the big screen. I was not disappointed, and he surpassed my already high expectations.
See Shadow knowing as little as possible about the movie. Although I saw the preview and knew one of the early twists going in, I was still shocked in the way that it is actually introduced in the movie. The basic story is that three groups were at war over a city, then two of the three joined forces to defeat the third and take the city, but only one of the two allies occupies the city. The tension of this situation is coming to a head, and we have front row seats to the conflict as it plays out in the king’s court, in private homes and secret spaces. The lead players are the King, the Commander and his wife, Madam, and the Princess. The supporting characters are Yang and his son, a faithful follower of the Commander and Lu, the King’s toady.
If the story sounds boring, it isn’t. There are multiple layers to the story. There is the story that is playing out in public. There are multiple private side stories about real motives (professional and personal) and what is really going on. I know that it makes no sense, but Shadow was so good that I pretended it was the last two episodes of Game of Thrones. Yimou ties all the threads together before the movie ends then leaves one result ambiguous, which I normally hate, but I didn’t mind because a clear resolution would be too polarizing and perhaps too political.
How can ancient court intrigue be too political? Shadow shows the personal impact of political maneuvers and ambition on the people, specifically women and the nameless masses who actually are from that city as personified by the titular character. He is treated as a chess piece, but he isn’t unfeeling or fooled by their patriotic rhetoric. His life is not his own. There is no part of him that hasn’t been taken, manipulated and used, but he still retains an identity and desires separate from theirs. Obedience is not equated with agreement, and the denouement courts controversy if you think about its ramifications.
Shadow depicts the complete spectrum of power and poses provocative questions. Are you supposed to respect and honor power regardless of whether or not the leadership is effective or stupid? Even if power is actually benevolent, effective and well meaning, if its actual effect is not because of lack of trust or confidence or transparency, does it not have the same overall effect as malevolent, ineffective and malice? The first shot of power over the powerless, the real over the shadow, is such a vampiric, J Horror in the vein of Audition or Chan-wook Park shocking shot that it wordlessly stripped down and conveyed the essence of how distorted things are underneath the beautiful, stark veneer of the court. I don’t recall seeing anything so jarring, intimate and ugly in a Yimou film, which are usually characterized by their beauty.
Shadow is no exception and is gorgeous to behold. The color palette, or lack thereof, puts other films to shame. The majority of the film looks like a black and white film except for the color of flesh, but as the conflict becomes more overt, hues of green and brown are introduced to the palette, then violent reds turning brown dominate the end. It is like the visual soul sister to Suspiria.
Shadow’s music is part of the plot and also reflects the emotional palette of the film. After watching Amazing Grace, I was relieved at the maturity of my fellow viewers because there is one turbulent, explosive musical scene that isn’t funny, but could elicit laughs from viewers unfamiliar with the style, and then I would have been fuming silently in my seat. It is one of the more powerful scenes in the film and describing it would ruin it, but it is clearly an aural metaphor for an argument.
Last, but not least, Shadow has excellent, edge of your seat fighting. It is a martial arts film so the fighting is both poetic and brutal with explicit references to a battle of the sexes within an individual and on the grander stage. Even though Yimou only started filming martial arts late in his career, he does them better than many people who have been doing it their entire career, and honestly may be one of the best now that he has entered the field. I’m certain that a lot of the deeper meaning of this film got lost in translation, even the moments that are explicitly explained to the audience.
There were moments when I guessed a plot twist seconds before it happened throughout Shadow. This moment of expectation actually heightened the tension because of the way that you breathe out when you guess something and are explaining something versus the swift inhalation when it happens. Yimou definitely was deliberately implementing a subtle rhythm to his movie, which maybe echoed the music and fighting theme, but I neither know enough about music nor fighting to elaborate further on the connection. Yimou has not lost the ability to understand what it is like to be an audience member experiencing his film for the first time, which is not so easy to do when you’re doing all this work behind the camera and have worked on editing scenes to the point of monotony. Instead of bemoaning its predictability, I appreciated how he had an expectation that my movie experiences would be at a certain level and was able to exploit it instead of trying to go for something bigger, bolder or more exploitive. It is such a clever way of dealing with the world—using the existing energy in your favor instead of trying to overcome or change it.
See Shadow. If you don’t like subtitles, you’re missing out on a whole world of movies that are better than anything that America is doing. Grow!
