Nine things you didn't know about "The House of Flying Daggers"

[muckefuck]

I really should be sleeping now. I'd love to be sleeping now, but I'm still bloated from a day of unspeakable gastronomic indulgence capped by almost single-handedly (not to denigrate bunj's contributions, but I think we know who had more rice and baby octopodes) upholding our party's honour at a Korean barbecue house. Still, how often do I get to celebrate my own brother's birthday? That's right: Once a year, tops, so I intend to make it count!

Sorry I didn't get to this earlier, but we all know my event-planning skills aren't the bestest. Chances are you probably know at least some of these facts--particularly those gleaned from the IMDB--but I'll be very surprised if anyone reading this knows all nine of them. Since there do exist even worse procrastinators than I and I never know what counts as a spoiler for some people, the cut tag is our friend.

1. The Title The name is completely different in Chinese: 十面埋伏. This literally translates as "Ten Side[d] Ambush", which strikes me as somewhat hyperbolic if not entirely inaccurate description of some of the key scenes.
2. The House is not a House The name of the clandestine martial arts organisation in the film is actually 飛刀門 or "Flying Knife Gate". The last element is common in the name of Chinese secret societies; the most famous triad of them all is the Hong Men (some have not entirely wholesome reasons for preferring the Wade-Giles romanisation, "Hung Men") or "Red Gate". Since any respectable Chinese establishment, from the house of a family of substance on up, is graced with an ornate entrance gate, it's not surprising that men2 has metonymically come to mean whatever is behind the gate, be it a family, clan, school, or sect. (Many triads [at least reputedly] originated at famous temples--the Hong Men at Shaolin Monastery, for instance.)
3. The Male Lead Kaneshiro Takeshi has put his mixed parentage and mastery of five languages to good use, appearing in Japanese, Hong Kong, and now Mainland films. His mother is Taiwanese, his father half Japanese, and he attended an American school in Taiwan, giving him command of English as well. Could an American breakthrough be in his future?
4. The Dedication The film is dedicated to Hong Kong legend Anita Mui Yim-fong because this was intended to be her final film. (I suspect she was to play the brothel owner, but I may never know; the IMDB tells us her death forced revisions to the script.) Unfortunately, she succumbed to cervical cancer mere months before her parts were slated to be filmed. bunj was shocked to hear she died--as I was when the news broke around New Year of last year. She ignored her condition for so long that her final decline was very sudden.
5. The Locations If some adjoining scenes look like they belong to different films, it's because they were shot on different continents (or, depending on how you look at it, different ends of the same continent). The bamboo forests flourish in Sichuan, the very un-Chinese birch and beech forests cover the Eastern Carpathians. I can't help seeing the mismatch as a flaw that I doubt Zhang's previous cinematographer would have allowed.
6. Animals Were Harmed This is pure speculation on my part, but it really looked like the horses were being made to fall by yanking their forelegs out from under them without warning (to the animal, that is). Hollywood gave up this cruel (and fatal) method decades ago, favouring expensively-trained-to-fall steeds instead; with modern CGI being what it is (and there was no shortage of it in the film), there's even less excuse for resorting to it. But I imagine Ukraine and China have slightly less stringent restrictions on such matters than the States. Frankly, if my hunch is right, I'm more than a little disappointed in Zhang Yimou.
7. The Language The Chinese used in the film is a curious blend of Classical and Modern. The pronunciation is pure putonghua (I couldn't detect any accent from our Taiwan- and Hong Kong-born male leads), but many of the words used are archaic. For instance, Standard Chinese na3li ("where") was universally eschewed in favour of he2chu4 (literally "what place")--a locution I've never encountred outside of Literary Chinese. Is it as familiar to modern Mandarin-speakers as "whence" and "whither" are to us? They also seemed to use a lot of monosyllabic verbs where the modern colloquial would prefer less ambiguous bisyllabic phrases, but the copula and--as far as I could tell--all particles were Modern Standard. I wonder how intelligible the dialogue was to modern Chinese audiences and whether subtitles (standard issue for Hong Kong films) were included in the Mainland release. Unfortunately, I'd have to see Hero again in order to say how closely the two films' registers resembled one another.
8. The Leader The subtitles identified her as "Nia", but I don't recall hearing that in the dialogue. (It's not even a permissible syllable in Chinese, though bisyllabic "Ni'a" could exist.) She was respectfully addressed and referred to as da4jie3 or "eldest sister" by all Flying Daggers members. (Tong members traditionally use kinship terms in this way; watch a Hong Kong gangster film and you'll hear daai6go1 ["eldest brother"] all over the place.)
9. The Uniform The big character on the officers' uniforms is 捕 "arrest, capture". 捕役 and 捕差 (both meaning roughly "arresting servant") are obsolete Chinese terms for "policeman".

What did I think of the film overall? I was less disturbed by the political themes than with Hero, but more annoyed by the breaks in continuity. A little poetic license is forgivable, but the twists of the finale were a bit too much to bear--in retrospect, that is. At the time, I was so completely absorbed by the ravishing mise and melodrama that even the distractions of the mentally unwell man in the preceding row couldn't pull me out of the film. And, like bunj, I was rooting for Andy "Not in the Face!" Lau Dak-wah's character throughout.

Comments

[goreism.livejournal.com]

I got 6 out of 8 -- a solid C.

何處 is probably not as archaic as "whence" or "whither"; you'll still hear it in spoken formal discourse, any legal disclosures or legislation. Perhaps in a speech by a member of the Legislative Yuan (while they're not busy beating the crap out of each other, of course). Or likely in a song.

Interestingly enough, "cellphone" in Taiwanese slang is da4ge1da4, which (like lao3da4, etc.) is probably similar to daai6go1.

I'm not sure about the political overtones of Hero -- you're probably referring to the idea that it's best for all Chinese people to form one polity, but that's hardly something the PRC propagandists came up with -- that would be giving too much credit to PRC propaganda. As you probably know, it's something so ingrained into Chinese political thought that most everybody I know in Taiwan barely even noticed it.

Incidentally, is the second syllable of na3li really neutral in the language of instruction? I pronounce it as third tone, and it exhibits the same tone sandhi as if li was third tone.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

My teacher has oddly formal diction. Like most Taiwanese, she doesn't normally distinguish the retroflexes when speaking colloquially, but she tries very hard to do this in instruction (sometimes with confusing results). Plus, she insists that there is no tone sandhi when two third tones come together. I think she does make it unconsciously, but she really is wont to say things like na3li in front of the class.

In any case, the sandhi is phonetic, not phonemic, so there's no reason to show it in transcription, is there? (Except the rule isn't recoverable when the second character is neutral tone. Hmm, must ponder this dilemma.)

BTW, you don't happen to remember what verb was regularly being translated as "understand", do you? I would've expected dong3, but it sounded consistently like du. I can't think of an appropriate candidate at all.

(BTW, I changed the number of points. This won't change your final grade, I'm afraid.)

[goreism.livejournal.com]

Yah, the sandhi isn't shown in transcription; what I meant is that tone sandhi doesn't seem to be expressed when the second character is neutral tone, e.g. nü3zi. Given that it is expressed in na3li3, it would seem odd of the second character is really neutral tone in putonghua.

Does your teacher pronounce her [ʐ] as [z]? Many Taiwanese people I've heard inconsistently pronounce their retroflexes as alveolars; while some people do indeed pronounce it as [z], usually they seem to get that one right. So I'm curious.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Last night, we got the first lesson from the new textbook and I noticed that they write na2li. This is Yale, though; I'm not sure if they follow different rules for the transcription of tones than Pinyin. In any case, the second character really does sound "toneless" to me even if I'm not 100% sure what the tone is on na3.

Unfortunately, the first symbol above isn't displaying in my browser. I'll assume, however, that it's the Pinyin r. You're right, she does hit that one very consistently--probably because there's no corresponding voiced aveolar fricative to confuse it with. She doesn't just pronounce retroflexes as aveolars, she also overcorrects: Last night, she confused the newbie by repeatedly pronouncing 從 as chong2.

[nibadi.livejournal.com]

Nein, wirklich erstaunt bin ich nicht über dein Wissen zu diesem und jenem. Stimmt nicht ganz, ein bisserl bin ich dann doch immer wieder überrascht. Aber ich hatte nicht den Eindruck, dass der Film tatsächlich die Intention hat, eine politische Botschaft zu vermitteln. Von den sprachlichen Feinheiten habe ich gar nichts mitbekommen, da ich eine synchronisierte Fassung sah (aber auch im Original würde ich nur fremd klingende Töne wahrnehmen können).

Ich habe primär eine Liebesgeschichte gesehen, die auswegslos ist. Die Story erschien mir flach, vieles war sehr überzogen. Und doch habe ich diese Bilderflut genossen. Ich fand die Szenen im Bambus, die Kampf- und Tanzszenen wunderbar inzeniert. Selbst die kitschige Schlussszene im Schnee gefiel mir gut. Das ich den Helden sehr schön fand, spielt wohl auch eine kleine Rolle.

Hast du auch 2046 gesehen? Ich bin gespannt, was du zu diesem schönen traurigen Film sagst.

[bunj.livejournal.com]

(I suspect she was to play the brothel owner, but I may never know; the IMDB tells us her death forced revisions to the script.)

I suspect she was to play the head of the Flying Daggers (who I will continue to call Nia until that controversy is settled). I did feel there was something more to that story that they weren't telling. Of course, that could also be part of the choppy editing.

It's probably unfair to compare HoFD to Hero, but they came out within a year of each other (at least in the US) with the same director and some of the same cast (apparently the WTO has decided Zhang ZiYi needs to be in every Chinese film that makes it to the US, much like their Gerard Depardieu rule). I agree that Hero has the better continuity, and better cinematography in general. What bothered me about Hero's politics was not the 'one China' message per se but how the protagonists were willing to submit to a tyrant to ensure peace. I can't help but strongly disagree with that point of view.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I think of Zhang as the Gong Li for the next generation. (Poor thing, she doesn't even get the matron roles in Zhang Yimou's films any more!)

You're right, Nia does seem more likely. And it's hard to imagine that Mui wouldn't have been allowed to do some serious ass-kicking of her own.