Tsui Hark returns with Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants
Another reminder from China that CGI action melodramas can be shamelessly entertaining.
Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants | Tsui Hark | China | 146 minutes
Currently playing at Marcus Point and AMC Fitchburg (at least through Wednesday, February 26)
Many fond memories came back to me while watching Tsui Hark’s newest feature film, Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants, which certainly skewed my response to it in its favor. It could very well be that it is just another CGI-driven action spectacle, indistinguishable from current Hollywood blockbusters in terms of storytelling and visual style. But it didn’t feel like that to me while watching it. While it certainly is not groundbreaking, I found it to be a visually imaginative good-old-fashioned melodrama, presented without the heavy, self-importance and emotional detachment that sinks most blockbuster spectacles.
Maybe I’m giving too much credit to Tsui here. While I would have preferred something more grounded in terms of practical effects like The Blade (1995) or Time and Tide (2000), I kept thinking back to how his early special effect spectacles like Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983) maintained the anarchic energy of 1980s and 90s Hong Kong action films with a wonderfully playful approach to Hollywood-style visual effects. Let me be clear: Legends does not have an anarchic sensibility, but it does have its wow moments. What connects it most clearly to the Hong Kong action tradition is that it gets melodrama right, to the degree that I was surprised by my own emotional response to the film. But then again, I’m a bit of a sucker for melodrama.
Legends is an adaptation of Jin Jong’s novel, The Legend of the Condor Heroes (1959), and I will return below to another filmmaker inspired by the same novel. Our main protagonist Guo Jing, (Xiao Zhan), is drawn into the conflict between the Mongols (led by Genghis Khan, you know him, right?) and the Jins. While there are many alliances, territories, and intrigues to keep track of, I’ll keep things relatively simple by saying that Guo Jing searches for Huang Rong (Zhuang Dafei), the daughter of Huang Yaoshi (“Heretic East”) one of the Five Greats in martial arts skills. Flashing back, we discover that meeting Huang Rong led Guo Jing to learn the martial arts techniques associated with the Novem Scripture. Huang Rong is captured by Ouyang Feng (“Venom West,” played by Tony Leung Ka-fai), another of the Five Greats, who seeks the secrets of Novem Scripture for himself.
That’s about one-third of the plot details to keep track of as the film progresses. Despite the plot complexity, thanks to wuxia genre conventions it is pretty clear who we are rooting for and against. The Novem Scripture is the MacGuffin in the heroic plot; Genghis Kahn versus the Jins (and the Songs, who occupy the land between them) drives the political intrigue; and a relationship triangle between Guo Jing, Huang Rong, and Genghis Khan’s princess daughter, Huajun (Wenxin Zhang) provides emotional weight to the proceedings.
While Tsui utilizes many of the techniques that have become tired in CGI action spectacles, this might be the first film in which “virtual cameras” seemingly floating around wherever they want to did not bother me. In fact, for once I liked how the virtual swooping camera was integrated with the practical camerawork and movement. Every action scene has at least one interesting touch in its visual design. And I admired how the powers associated with the Novem Scripture were visualized in a final showdown, which put a nice cap on the progressive ambition of each action sequence. This sense of playfulness connects Legends to Tsui’s earlier work.
I have to admit, I have not kept up with Tsui’s more recent work, and he’s been relatively busy with five features since 2020 (he turned 75 years-old this month). Perhaps I would be less impressed if I saw how Legends fits into his last few films (and other examples of recent popular Chinese cinema). But as I was watching Legends, I had a very good time.
Wong Kar-wai’s Ashes of Time (1994, one of my favorites) also takes its characters and settings from Jin’s The Legend of Condor Heroes, and much of the power of Wong’s film comes from how he transformed the characters for his own purposes. It’s hard to reconcile the idea that the Ouyang Feng from Ashes of Time (played by Leslie Cheung) eventually becomes the main antagonist in the novel and Tsui’s film. But I did enjoy how the two films play off of each other, including its references to Huang Rong’s home, Peach Blossom Island, which is a significant location in Ashes of Time. It would probably make more sense to watch Tsui’s film first (or read the original novel, or other adaptations) to understand what Wong was up to when he took these characters, likely familiar to Hong Kong and Asian audiences, and shaped them into something new in Ashes of Time.
Legends is one of three examples1 of Chinese popular cinema that have played in Madison theaters in the past few weeks, including Ne Zha 2, which has broken the global box office record for an animated feature, and Detective Chinatown 1900. (I liked Ne Zha 2, by the way, and perhaps I’ll get a chance to say more about it in a future post.) Generally speaking, people are surprised when I tell them that I’m going to see Asian popular cinema in a commercial theater in Madison. But then again, people remain surprised that Indian popular cinema (in Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil languages) has been a staple of local commercial theaters in Madison for over a decade. (See my brief Isthmus article on the topic of Indian films at AMC Fitchburg from . . . wow, 2013).
There are two lessons to be learned from this lack of awareness from Madison film audiences. First, we need to do a much better job getting the word out about what is actually playing in Madison. Second, when people (maybe including myself) complain about the lack of certain types of films in Madison’s commercial theaters, we need to understand why Marcus and AMC are consistently screening Asian popular cinema. It is because people go out of their house, buy tickets, and see the films. Screenings of Asian popular cinema are sustainable in the current Madison film market. What other kinds of films might be sustainable in the Madison market if more of us understood the impact that we can have?
Curator’s Corner: Let’s Get Lost (1988) at MMoCA Cinema, Wednesday, February 26, 7:00pm
Just a quick note to remind you that the Winter MMoCA Cinema series wraps up this week with Bruce Weber’s black and white documentary about jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, Let’s Get Lost (1988). The film won the Critics Prize at the Venice Film Festival, and it has been recently re-released after a 4K restoration. Hope to see you there!
For other films playing in town next week, be sure to check out Alex Lovendahl’s very helpful Substack, The Horizon Line Madison, every Wednesday.
JoAnne Powers, host of Wages of Cinema (during Fire Worship every other Tuesday, 2–5pm on WORT-FM), let me know that there were actually four examples of Chinese popular cinema in Madison in the past few weeks. The fourth was Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force. JoAnne also suggested that Chinese New Year was a factor in the number of Chinese films in town, and that these numbers usually are not sustained for the rest of the year.