Nameless, a great master swordsman, is granted an audience with the the ancient Chinese King of Qin. Nameless has singlehandedly taken out the three assassins the King has most feared, and the King wishes to honor him. Still, the King is paranoid and requires all subjects to sit 100 paces away from him. The King asks Nameless how he killed the assassins. With every story, the King becomes more intrigued and allows Nameless to move closer to him. But at some point, the King begins to doubt Nameless’s stories and suggests that the swordsman was in fact there to assassinate the King, himself. In the unfolding dialogue, Nameless monologues about the way the King is right, the ways the King misread the beliefs of his assassins, and Nameless’s thoughts on what China ultimately needs.
This film is a visual delight, beautifully acted, choreographed, and designed. And I loved the way the story unfolds. What my synopsis doesn’t get into is that with each recollection, the film cuts to a gorgeous, color-intense, intricately staged fight sequence. Like fights in similar films, the scenes transcend reality and steep in a highly-hued suggestion of what the characters’ struggle is. It’s immensely beautiful, riveting, and is a joy to watch.
At some point, it became evident that I was watching a patriotic myth (not unlike American patriotic myths), but with themes which were somewhat inaccessible to me. While those of us with a western POV may only understand China as the monolith state government depicted in the media, the country is in fact made up of many ancient cultures, traditions, kingdoms, and peoples. In the film, Nameless decides that for China, the sum of a united country is greater than its parts—even if that means losing the rich diversity of the country, living under a despotic king, and ultimately, sacrificing his own life. With the film’s unreliable narrator pivoting the tale’s morality, the film lands at a place that feels purposeful but doesn’t jive with my personal feelings on the value of freedom and diversity. Maybe I’m over-reading into this, and I didn’t go into this film looking for this angle. But to me, the film’s propaganda-like qualities became organically evident.
So the gorgeous film lands on a weird morality tale that I don’t fully get. That’s ok, it’s still a gorgeous film.