THE ASSASSIN: A Film Critics Will Love, But Audiences Will Hate

Even if my opinions may come across like those of a film snob at times, one who will do all in his power to avoid anything audiences may actually enjoy. I am not a film critic, but a film fan who sometimes happens to write scathing reviews. I don’t think every movie should aspire to be high art, but I do think cinema as a medium should be either entertaining or emotionally involving dramatically, with any pretensions towards being regarded as art being secondary concerns to filmmakers.

Indecipherable To Most Audiences

I have taken a week after the screening to attempt to articulate my thoughts on The Assassin, the first film in eight years from Taiwanese director Hsiao-Hsien Hou, which has been named the best film of the year by international critics in a gigantic poll conducted for Sight and Sound on the day of writing. Although art is subjective, I am still bewildered as to the positive reactions his attempt at a Wuxia film has received; although I’m not familiar with the acclaimed director’s back catalogue, I can see that his glacially-paced style and indifference to both character and narrative don’t help to make an engrossing subversion of genre norms.

It could be easily argued that the glacial pacing and willingness not to tell the story in a conventional manner is due to overfamiliarity with the material it is inspired by. Yet this is even harder to argue if, like me, you are unfamiliar with the director’s previous work – as an entrance point to his filmography, it is hard to imagine anything less accessible. But for the number of critical adorers he has accumulated over three decades of filmmaking, this registers as more than just business as usual, but a flat-out masterpiece.

The Assassin is inspired by a landmark Wuxia text dating back to the 9th century that is famous to Chinese viewers – despite being a Taiwanese film, it is largely funded by Chinese production companies, so it is safe to assume it won’t be as impenetrable to audiences there, even if it did flop at the local box office.

The story is a simple one that forms the backbone of many narratives in this area of genre cinema. Nie Yinniang (Shu Qi), the eponymous assassin, is given a long and arduous assignment by her master to go to the far-away province of Weibo to kill a military governor, who also happens to be her cousin, whom she was previously arranged to marry. The sole problem is that Nie often shows mercy when it comes to killing – a botched killing spree due to her problematic pacifism has led her on her long and arduous journey.

Without a doubt, Hou’s visual style is nothing less than completely sumptuous, showing us sweeping vistas and intimate locales in ways that are breathtaking and frequently dreamlike. As the movie progresses, it is clear that as a director, he is relying on images to tell the story, as entire ten minutes passages fly by without anybody uttering a single word – the images he shows may prove to be elliptical and nothing more than surface pleasures, but they are undeniably beautiful. His prior works may have proven him to be a visual storyteller, but here, any narrative requirements are foregone in order for him to be purely a visual artist.

Visual Beauty, But Narratively Boring

I have an admiration for any director who makes a film purely at their own rhythm, whose filmmaking affectations have consumed their work to the extent that it is alienating to any newcomers, or any audiences unaccustomed to their way of making movies. It is solely on this level that it makes sense that he received the Best Director award at Cannes earlier this year – there were clearly better directed films, but no film as distinctive to its filmmaking as The Assassin is to Hou.

I feel I need to delve deeper into Hou’s filmography, as this could very well be a masterpiece that I am yet to decipher; on first viewing, it is an entirely tedious experience, proving that pretty visuals can’t make you care about a film with no emotional centre. There is some distinctively Kubrickian precision to the look of many of the sequences here, yet no other director following in his wake has managed to make audiences feel enraptured by films often described as all surface.

The problems with the film are entirely on the basic levels of storytelling and emotional investment. Hou frequently introduces characters with no explanation, inviting them into the tapestry of the film with no concession to the audience as to how they fit into the story, or why we should care about them. The film opens with the sole concession to the audience: onscreen text informing us of the narrative background, yet it remains incomprehensible despite the simplicity of the story we are presented with.

One of Hou’s most acclaimed films is The Puppet Master, a biopic of one of Taiwan’s most celebrated puppeteers; that figure has clearly influenced his directorial style, as actors onscreen appear like puppets, being forced to move around by a director indifferent to their emotions, obsessed purely by the landscapes that overwhelm them. This analogy is never more clear than during the Wuxia sequences, directed in a way that suggests they were included by Hou in spite of himself in order to fully subscribe to the genre he was subverting. The half-hearted miniature bursts of action feel entirely out of place, suggesting that as a director, he didn’t have the courage of his convictions to keep things at an eerily dreamlike pace.

Conclusion

The Assassin feels like a stereotype of a movie that will be beloved by critics but reviled by audiences, even within art house and genre film circles. Hou’s auteurist vision is remarkable, but it isn’t realised in a way that will leave filmgoers either satisfied or enlightened. It is a film about somebody who is required to be a cold-blooded killer that is low on the blood lust, but high on the cold shoulder from emotion.

With The Assassin riding high on Sight and Sound’s best of the year list, what are the best arthouse discoveries of the year?

The Assassin is out now in the US and on January 21 in the UK. All international release dates are here.