A
version of this review appeared in the online version of The
Age,
September 13, 2012.
Buffs who
associate Taiwan with super-subtle art cinema may get a shock upon
plunging into this big-budget battle epic – based
on an actual incident from 1930, when an indigenous forest clan, the
Seediq, rose up in doomed revolt agains the Japanese occupiers of
their land. Given the still uncertain political status of Taiwan as a
nation, it's clear why this story resonates today. Yet Warriors
of The Rainbow remains
essentially a brutal yet romantic action-adventure, as if the
director Wei Te-sheng had seen Avatar and
realised that he could do something similar without needing to send
his characters into outer space. The camera swoops over lush green
hills, swords clash and pan-pipes warble, while blood spurts in
tasteful amounts.
If
the film can be believed, the Seediq warriors were intent above all
on gaining honour by decapitating their enemies (women could achieve
something similar through weaving). At the most interesting
moments, the martial code it celebrates seems bracingly alien: as
defeat looms, suicide preceded by the slaughter of one's offspring is
viewed as a noble if tragic gesture. More frequent are lapses
into sheer kitsch, with digital rainbows shimmering above the forest
at the appropriate symbolic moments. For the record, the theatrical
cut of Warriors
of the Rainbow discussed
here is roughly half the length of the full version recently shown at
the Melbourne International Film Festival; the missing scenes
probably made the narrative easier to follow, but for this viewer
two-and-a-half hours felt like quite enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment