Motion pictures: moving and colorful

I spent the afternoon watching a little movie that made all the tears well out of my body. The fact that I have been inhaling bleach while cleaning the bathroom before may explain the inconvenience. But I know it was mostly from being moved by a brilliant storytelling.

Hero
I will not explain the movie but merely attempt to describe its impression on me. One could identify multiple heroes in the story, but apparently the chinese character covers the plural as well. Maybe because all of them possess unique qualities, and any additional word or letter will not enrich or reveal any of those qualities.

The beginning of the movie sets the tone, when captions show that some are willing to die for love, a cause, a country, and some are all equally ready to kill for those. This prepares you for a great epic movie, with great battles between great armies. This movie does nothing of such. There is no single hero and multiple sidekicks. Instead, it shows you how simple individuals go through their life battling their past, desire of revenge, hardships of life. It shows you how someone would struggle to achieve a perfect martial arts move, or a great calligraphy on a scroll full of meanings. Even the advertised tyran with the huge army is found to be struggling to be understood and finding a way to accomplish his goal: to unify the land (China).

In the end, our conventional heroes face death peacefully and with the knowledge they have reached their goals of loving, teaching and understanding their obstacles. One hero is left to continue the mission of appeasing the Chinese land, after facing the pain of killing those who have helped him get there. It is a new approach to the becoming of a ruler.

combining all arts in this movie, it brings you despair and hope at the same time: Despair, for even with the greatest intentions (like the ruler), one would hurt close friends or peers' feelings and loose them; Why would anyone even try to help, explain, save, etc...? And hope because the photography, music, movements , and interactions reveal something worth trying.

Those landscapes, beautiful colors and slow motion details of leaves, rain drops and sand are the little details that are worth living for. And for an emotional girlie girl like me, it is the ultimate lesson that hopefully will bring me courage.

Quoting the Director of another great movie (Four Feathers):
"True courage is not the ability to face death. True courage is the ability to face life"