By the time of The Sword’s release in 1980, the wuxia genre had begun to fall out of favor in the Hong Kong in favor of kung-fu movies and more contemporary-set action films that would define the province’s genre cinema for the next two decades. In many ways, Patrick Tam’s film, with its blend of melodrama, weapons-based action, and wire-fu choreography, is a throwback to the genre’s heyday. Nonetheless, the director, a leading figure of what would become the Hong Kong New Wave, complicates the story with an emotional dimension rare to even the most florid wuxia of years past.
The Sword opens with the forging of a mystical blade for a legendary swordsman, Fa Chin-shu (Tien Feng), who’s warned by the blacksmith that the weapon will ultimately be his undoing. The action then shifts to a far younger warrior, Lee Mak-yin (Adam Cheng), who sets off on a journey to locate Fa in order to test his own swordsmanship against the master’s.
Mak-yin’s quest, hubristic but honor-bound, is standard genre fare, but the film pivots from this setup by quickly embroiling the young fighter in a tangled romantic web that involves an affectionate young woman, Ying-chi (Chui Kit), whom he saves from bandits; a now-married former flame, Siu-yu (JoJo Chan); and Siu-yu’s husband, Lin Wan (Norman Chui), who moves swiftly to shame and kill his wife’s former lover out of possessive jealousy.
While Lin Wan pieces together a scheme to destroy Mak-yin, much of The Sword’s focus remains on the asymmetrical affections between the main characters. Frequently, the film’s pace slows to study Mak-yin’s lingering love for Siu-yu, or Yang-chi’s morose realization that the warrior doesn’t notice her own interest because of his fixation on his old lover.
The same wuxia compositional techniques that emphasize the spatial dimensions of any given location to clarify action are also used to highlight the emotional distance between characters, and occasional uses of lens filters bathe the frame in passionate reds. Often, The Sword resembles less a classic Hong Kong martial arts epic than a Technicolor melodrama from 1950s Hollywood, and the characters’ stoic demeanors recast the usual hardened resolve of warrior codes and social propriety into strained expressions of longing and resentment.
This focus on the characters’ inner turmoil, though, doesn’t preclude some classic wuxia action, which Tam and his choreographers stage with a balletic grace worthy of King Hu. Befitting the film’s title, the camera is alive to how the characters wield their swords in battle, with close-ups on the clash of steel on steel and frequent moments of split-second respite that capture the gleam of light on metal when warriors pull apart from each other and strike defensive poses. The Sword never shies away from the senseless brutality of combat, but it gets as swept up by the characters’ quieter moments of their muted agony as it does by their physical violence.
Nonetheless, The Sword takes no cathartic sense of victory from any duel, and even among the rich vein of wuxia films that reject the notion of honor in violence, it stands out for a despairing denouement in which the few characters left standing find themselves disgusted with the entire belief system that guided their actions throughout the story. The fatalism that defines both its action and romance would become a key feature of the budding Hong Kong New Wave, and it would be a crucial element in Tam’s later triumphs like My Heart Is That Eternal Rose.
Image/Sound
Eureka’s transfer is sourced from a 2K restoration that brings out the full range of colors of the cinematography and the production design. Reds and greens dazzle against the earthen palette of generic wuxia sets of villages and countryside steppes, and the whites and pinks of costumes look radiant. Skin tones are natural, and textures are sharply detailed. The soundtrack has only a trace of the canned quality that typically afflicts post-sync dubbing, and the sound effects of sharp metallic clangs and ruffling fabrics fill the space around the nicely centered dialogue. But the real delight of the soundtrack is the clarity of the score, a synth-heavy work that finds an unlikely balance between John Carpenter-esque minimalist dread and florid melodrama.
Extras
Eureka’s disc comes with two commentary tracks, one by Asian film expert Frank Djeng and the other by action movie gurus Mike Leeder and Arne Venema. Djeng offers much insight into the state of Hong Kong’s politics and film industry at the time, while Leeder and Venema are provide keen observations on Patrick Tam’s unique take on well-worn genre tropes. There’s also an interview with martial arts cinema expert Wayne Wong that posits The Sword as a bridge between old- and new-school wuxia cinema, as well as an overview of the film and Tam’s career by critic Andrew Heskins. A booklet contains an archival interview with Tam and a new essay by film scholar Leung Wing-Fai, who thoughtfully scrutinizes the film’s techniques.
Overall
Eureka gives Patrick Tam’s The Sword, a prototypical entry of the Hong Kong New Wave, an excellent transfer and a clutch of informative extras.
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