Hero, Kurosawa and a cinema of the senses.

ZHANG, Yimou, 1951-; AKIRA, Kurosawa

Zhang Yimou's relationship to the filmmaking of Kurosawa Akira is an intriguing one, and especially with regard to the Chinese director's controversial film Yingxiong/Hero (2002), a film whose treatment of authoritarianism has fuelled debate and divided its critics since it was first released. Zhang has made no secret of the fact that his own cinematic ‘hero’ is Kurosawa; but despite this admission, the relationship between Hero and Kurosawa's filmmaking has not been extensively explored. This essay argues that Zhang adopts, adapts and even expropriates Kurosawa's style to create a sensuously unifying cinematic language which reframes recent ideas about so-called ‘pan-Asian’ cinema – despite the militantly imperialist designs with which Hero's transnationalism has been routinely associated. At the heart of this cinematic language is a commitment to the power of colour that is inspired by films such as Rashômon (1950), Ran (1985) and Yume/Dreams (1990), but which Zhang takes in new filmic and philosophical directions. Abetted by the work of Kurosawa, colour in Hero becomes a powerfully synaesthetic experience, and one that has helped to inspire a chromatic ‘cinema of the senses’ across East Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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