Another one for the archives; let's take a look at a film that deserves more attention – director He Ping ([i]Warriors of Heaven and Earth[/i]) and the second of his 'Chinese Westerns', the little-seen [i]Sun Valley[/i] from 1995. Swap six-shooters for swordplay, the Old West for the steppes – this glorious, flawed but fascinating little film is crying out for any kind of DVD release. Review after the break.
A lot of academics writing film criticism like to talk about genres crossing cultural boundaries, in particular the way Asia latched onto the mythic iconography of America's Old West. It's a persuasive enough argument lately – plenty of people can talk about how Jon Woo or Johnny To's films use the image of the hero as wandering, surly knight-errant driven to a bloody end by a higher purpose, and directors like Kim Jee-woon ([url=https://screenanarchy.com/site/view/k-film-reviews-the-good-the-bad-and-the-weird/][i]The Good, The Bad and The Weird[/i][/url]) or Takeshi Miike ([url=https://screenanarchy.com/site/view/tiff-report-sukiyaki-western-django-review/][i]Sukiyaki Western: Django[/i][/url]) make it even easier by pilfering elements from every cult classic under the sun outright. Still, there was one mainland director working back in the glory days of Hong Kong cinema who went largely ignored at the time, despite arguably coming a lot closer to the true spirit of the Western than any of them.
He Ping ([i]Warriors of Heaven and Earth[/i]) made his first attempt at a 'Chinese Western' with his debut [i]Swordsman in Double-Flag Town[/i] in 1991, where a young wanderer arrives in a lonely desert village looking for his bride-to-be. Saving the girl from attempted rape he inadvertently kills the villainous Deadly Swordsman's brother in the process, and has to defend the town from Swordsman's wrath when the bad guys come looking for revenge.
Both [i]Swordsman...[/i] and Ping's followup [i]Sun Valley[/i] in 1995 are worlds away from the modern-day [i]wuxia pian[/i]. Slow, methodical character dramas with minimal plotting, there's very little action, no wires and what fighting does occur is generally over in seconds. What they lack in flair, however, is made up for in large part by epic cinematography and an atmosphere of windswept melancholy combined with a gritty, git-'er-done pragmatism unlike anything else out of the region.
[i]Sun Valley[/i] centres on the Avenger (Zhang Fengyi, Cao Cao in [url=https://screenanarchy.com/site/view/review-of-red-cliff/][i]Red Cliff[/i][/url]), an anonymous traveller who ends up passing through the titular region. He takes up lodging with Hong Liu (Yang Kuei-Mei, [i]The Knot[/i], [url=https://screenanarchy.com/site/view/tiff-report-the-wayward-cloud-review/][i]The Wayward Cloud[/i][/url]) a widow who owns the inn serving the camp that functions as a general meeting place for people driving livestock through the valley. It turns out the Avenger specifically wants to exact revenge on the nameless swordsman who slew his family several years before, a predictable character motivation livened up by the trauma having left the Avenger with a phobia of blood so severe he tends (unfortunately) to get extremely violent as a result.
This is spelled out for the audience at the end of the first third with Zhang Fengyi tipped over the edge, killing a string of bystanders and then going on to cut down anyone else who wants to see just how deranged he is. Somewhat perversely, Hong Liu finds herself drawn to the Avenger after this (since he didn't run her through given the chance), but healing the rents in our hero's psyche turns out to be more difficult than she hoped.
[i]Sun Valley[/i]'s strengths don't lie in Zhang Rui's script, however – it's clear from the word go that visually, He Ping has come on in leaps and bounds from [i]Swordsman...[/i] in every sense. The opening journey through the camp is a fantastic piece of scene-setting which is every inch the establishing shot from some classic Western; snow-capped mountains in the background; herds of sheep and horse driven down the hillside; Hong Liu wandering through the camp, travellers going through their day-to-day routines. The dust and grime puts one in mind of something like [i]Musa (The Warrior)[/i], but this is a far more believable universe we're in. It's hardly a period piece – this is still ultimately fantasy swordplay – but it's a strange blend of frontier Victoriana and subdued Asian romanticism that immediately strikes the viewer as quite distinctive.
Ping's direction is simply far more confident throughout, much closer to an omnnipotent viewpoint than [i]Swordsman...[/i], where it was often a little too obvious these were actors queueing up to hit their marks. There's a casual ease to much of the camerawork, a sense these things might still happen if they didn't have an audience, something that helps the suspension of disbelief immensely.
The story is hardly an afterthought, either. While it feels less like a sweeping progression of events and more a series of loosely-connected vignettes there's enough genuine feeling in Rui's script that both the lonely vistas and the scenes in the camp feel connected to the overall story arc. Added to that there's a presence to the way Ping captures even the most striking locations that gives them a sense of place which affirms how much they matter to the cast.
The main problem with [i]Sun Valley[/i] is it never really takes that final step which would push it towards the status of forgotten classic. Something like Tian Zhuangzhuang's [i]The Horse Thief[/i] is a [i]bona fide[/i] masterpiece in part because every location on screen is so obviously an essential part of the narrative their impact goes beyond a mere sense of place and takes on an almost mystical significance. [i]Sun Valley[/i] is ultimately too workmanlike, too tied to genre convention in comparison – there's no real awareness of any bigger picture, and it could be argued the film is merely another riff on countless 'you killed my master' B-grade fight flicks, only with pretensions to greatness and some pretty scenery.
There is some truth in that, yet [i]Sun Valley[/i] still doesn't deserve to be forgotten. In contrast to the recent wave of glittering costume dramas out of Hong Kong and the mainland (which doesn't seem to have broken quite yet) these Chinese Westerns have a hardscrabble dramatic weight which [i]Musa[/i] or even Jacob Cheung's [url=https://screenanarchy.com/site/view/a-battle-of-wits-on-dvd/][i]A Battle of Wits[/i][/url] can't quite match. For all its faults and all the promise it doesn't manage to fulfil it's still a pleasure to spend some time in He Ping's strange variation on the 'martial world'. Beautifully shot, intriguing and memorable, there's not much else quite like [i]Sun Valley[/i], and for those lucky enough to track down a copy it's highly recommended.