From Cannes: "Nie Yinniang" ("The Assassin") Almost Too Deliberate

People with a short attention span should think twice before watching “Nie Yinniang” (“The Assassin”), because it features extremely slow pacing and a large number of empty shots. If the viewer is prepared for slowness, however, he or she may discover the many beautiful surprises from the new work of Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, regardless of whether they end up loving the film or not.

Hou Hsiao-Hsien is best known for his period films and stories of city life. A master of slow long shots and depictions of subtle emotions, he surprised his fans seven years ago when he started a wuxia project, as the wuxia genre mainly deals with the fights of ancient Chinese Kung Fu masters. As it turns out, though, the movie goes beyond previous films in Hou’s arthouse style. Most of the film is devoted to an understated study of the protagonist’s psychological struggle.

Nie Yinniang (Shu Qi), a character in a ninth century folk tale, is the cousin of Tian Jian (Chang Chen), ruler of the Weibo province. However, she has been kidnapped and trained to be a lethal assassin, helping the central government clear out the disobedient provincial governors. When she is ordered to assassinate her cousin Tian, she has to choose whether she should listen to her emotions or abandon them as her work demands.

The director tries to have as little dialogue as possible (the leading actress, Shu, has perhaps fewer than ten lines), instead expressing the mood with cinematography and pacing. Many shots carry the hesitation and contemplation of the characters while still long shots suggest Nie Yinniang’s gaze at the world around her. In a beautiful shot in the later part of the movie, she brews an herbal medicine for her injured father (Dahong Ni), who is also a general in the Weibo province, and her father looks at her from behind. Yinniang’s action is an expression of her emotion, and this sequence demonstrates how she becomes aware of this emotion. The still long shot exposes her hesitative examination of whether she should give it up, and her father, knowing already she plans to assassinate the governor, looks at his daughter in a new way. All these things transpire without a word.

However, in some other shots where there does not seem to be any emotion or psychological struggles taking place, the director nevertheless spends extensive time shooting people passing by, horses eating grass, or characters speaking extremely slowly. The indiscriminate deliberateness is often confusing, and in exposition scenes that only serve to provide background information, the pacing becomes annoying—even the title of the film rolls for nearly a minute. If the director had kept the long shots that are full of emotional tension and then chosen a normal pace for the rest of the film, it might have been a lot more interesting.

While this pacing throughout the film might be at points ill-considered, the bottom line is that the cinematography is breathtaking. Many shots resemble traditional Chinese shan shui painting and evoke an atmosphere similar to the poems of the Tang Dynasty, during whose reign the story is set. From lakes and mountains surrounded by fog to interior scenes shot looking through a shelf of candles, all the objects in the movie have a serene and elegant beauty. The action scenes are delicate but sporadic, often starting and ending suddenly.

“Nie Yinniang” is an elegant wuxia movie, so beautifully shot that the cinematography alone could make it a masterpiece. However, at times it also can be confusingly slow and hard to relate to, which is the biggest problem—and probably the only problem—with the film.