Dong Chang (the Eastern Depot) was a special service organization during the Ming dynasty, one of the most powerful and vicious secret police forces in all of the history of China. Answering directly to the emperor, the Eastern Depot was controlled and directed by the eunuchs of the court. It had license to arrest and execute any member of the populace, up to and including highly placed ministers of the court, without having to clear it through any administrative or judicial departments of the government. It is not too much to say that the power of the Eastern Depot exceeded that of the modern Gestapo, and the very mention of its name was enough to cause innocent people to shake in their boots.
My films A Touch of Zen and the earlier Dragon Inn both have to do with the nefarious ways of the Eastern Depot. The James Bond films were all the rage at the time, a trend of which I did not quite approve. To my mind, whatever the purpose of a secret service organization, when it becomes too powerful, it is bound to be harmful to the people. Of course, much of the action in the James Bond stories was sheer fantasy, but they were nevertheless extremely popular and could not but exert an unsanitary influence. For this reason, in A Touch of Zen I sought to expose some of the evil deeds of an organization such as the Eastern Depot. - from King Hu's press release at the 1975 Cannes Film Festival
Dragon Inn and A Touch of Zen both serve to illustrate what happens when the balance of there two is not balanced. This film also uses Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism in a way that I have seen no other Chinese martial arts movie ever do (not even The 36th Chamber of Shaolin). The religious and spiritual aspects of this film are especially remarkable for how they are balanced out by the secular and, of course, fighting (the most famous and influential fight scenes in all of wuxia film history) sequences. The longest of the films in this King Hu "trilogy (if you include his two previous films), it is basically 3 movies in one that moves from ghost story to political intrigue/thriller to religious symbolism all while being a wuxia film throughout.
The opening of this film is remarkable because it is in a action film where no one speaks for the first 8 minutes. This is a marital arts film where the first punch is thrown for about 56 minutes. The music score is inverted from where we started with Come Drink with Me (1966) in that it leans more to Western-style orchestrations, but still uses Chinese classical music and Opera tropes as leitmotifs. The pace of the movie is much more laid-back than with Dragon Inn or any other Chinese martial arts film I have ever seen. Despite the pacing, it keeps you involved throughout the story.
We find a single Confucian scholar that lives in an abandoned military fort with his mother who wants him to take the civil service exam and marry; he also works in town as an artists. Our scholar sees things like the Ming civil service as a waste of time as he is under the influence of Confusions and Legalist philosopher Zhuge Liang. A mysterious man comes to town asks the scholar-artist for a portrait, but becomes very obsessed with the relatively new doctor in town. The scholar then finds an equally mysterious woman who has moved in next door to him in the abandoned fort.
We see Shih Chun in his second King Hu film--not as a badass fighters, but as a naive scholar who has to learn what his place in the world and life itself is truly about. Of course the stand-out acting is by Hsu Feng with the coldest, piercing stare this side of Ice Cube. Feng's presence as the cool and mysterious xianü (female fighter) here is incredible and she stamps her place as one of the greatest actresses in the history of action films. The Eastern Depot returns as the evil antagonists and their commander is played by Han Ying-xie who is the fight choreographer/action director for this film and the big bad of this movie (the scariest of King Hu's villains). While the eunuch from Dragon Inn was stronger, Commander Xu Xian-chun in A Touch of Zen smarter and intimidating on another level. One of his personal attendants is played by Sammo Hung who would be Han Ying-xie's successor as fight choreographer on King Hu's films. The leader of the Buddhist monks is played by Roy Chiao (who ironically was a Christian in real-life).
The exact date of the film's action is uncertain, but based on the historical record this takes place after the events of Dragon Inn. The context and background of this film is the Donglin Reform Movement that saw attempts by Confucian scholars and bureaucrats to embark on anti-corruption campaigns in the Chinese imperial civil bureaucracy. In particular, this movie takes place during the reign of the Tianqi Emperor when the eunuch Wei Zhongxian attempts to suppress the Donglin Movement by purging several of its leaders including Yang Lian, whose assassination/execution kicks-off the events of this this film. This is used as a subtle way to critique the imbalance of wu over wen, the political oppression going on in the Chinese-speaking world at the time, and to critique the James Bond films. Of course, the character of Gù Shěng-zhāi is a critique of the arrogance and hypocrisies of the intelligentsia during this the late 60s-early 70s.
A Touch of Zen is an interesting look at trying to understand the balances of civil and military authority; the balance of tradition and innovation/progress; how relentless people's greed is, and suggesting that there may be a way out of this vicious cycle with a touch of...well you get it. This is one of those films that, despite its length, I could watch on repeat forever. For all the films I have seen with Shaolin monks and Buddhism, none have used spirituality as seriously as this film. All of the questions of conflict, suffering, and evil give way to a moment of transcendence that few films in this genre have ever been confident enough to do.
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