DARKNESS IN THE SPOTLIGHT Binaries and Brutality in Zhang Yimou’s Shadow
Sword-wielding warriors, lofty, dramatic flights and epic historical backdrops are hallmarks of Chinese director Zhang Yimou’s striking wuxia films: Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004) and Curse of the Golden Flower (2006). Building worlds with ornate finesse, these films conjure emotive forces through vibrant, eye-popping colours and heightened choreography. His latest film, Shadow (2018), marks a lavish return to form, but he subverts the motifs audiences have come to expect by employing almost monochromatic cinematography and carefully crafted movement. Here, a muted palette instils the film with the elegance of Chinese ink-brush paintings, bringing forth starker depictions of violence that provoke more severe questions about the consequences of a destructive gluttony for power.
Shadow opens on a quivering Madam (Sun Li) peering through the keyhole of a high-scaling royal-palace door. An intertitle conveys that she is on the brink of making ‘the most difficult choice of her life’, though this deliberation is – as revealed later, in a cyclical return to the same shot – a flash-forward. The scene foreshadows Shadow’s knotty obsession with royal politics, wherein intrigue and secrets lie behind closed doors and decisions can make or break the status quo.
Set during the Three Kingdoms era, the film soon reveals its master schemer as the King of Pei’s (Zheng Kai) supposedly loyal second-in-command, Madam’s husband, Commander Yu (Deng Chao). The scene immediately following the flash-forward shows the Commander entering the palace Yet the creative licence Zhang has taken has made for a more fascinating tale, with the Commander’s Machiavellian scheme reimagining this episode in China’s past. Masquerading as an obedient subordinate, the Commander successfully conceals his duplicity deep within the labyrinthine royal residence. In time, we discover that this duplicity takes physical shape in the form of his own doppelganger: a ‘shadow’ intended to be a body double, ensuring that his position in the aristocratic hierarchy remains secure. The Shadow is Jing (also played by Deng) – kidnapped off the streets by the Commander’s father, forced to live in obscurity for twenty years, and named after the very city this double was raised to capture.
