The Blade: Cutting Deep

Discussing his take on jianghu in a 2009 interview, Tsui noted, “One usually thinks of brotherhood, a sense of obligation and such things, when the term comes up . . . The jianghu of the martial-arts film is a murky pool of water full of deceit, factional rivalries, and blind allegiances . . . Jianghu in the martial-arts world also allows us to examine the human conflicts that result from the expression of selfishness and ambition.” Both Chang and Tsui use their story to reflect on the “selfishness and ambition” of the other students at the school—as well as that of the outlaws who attacked the school in the past, killing the one-armed swordsman’s father—but Tsui also tackles those qualities in all his male characters.

The Blade begins with young Siu Ling (Song Lei), the naive daughter of the head of a sword foundry, cuddling a kitten while, in voice-over, she ponders the meaning of jianghu. Meanwhile, a group of men in the village outside lure a dog into a trap, laughing when the steel jaws close around its leg. (Tsui had used animals before to juxtapose innocence with psychosis; see—but be warned!—the beginning of Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind.) In this way, the movie signals from the start that the real world of martial arts is full of sadism and casual cruelty, not the nobility and fortitude depicted in earlier films. The Blade subverts yanggang films’ usual obsession with male bodies in states of extreme physical exertion by having Siu Ling stare at the relaxed, naked foundrymen while they bathe and horse around after work (thus also upending both Chang’s homoeroticism and the cinematic trope of the male gaze). Later, Tsui shows the men’s nude backsides again, but now striped with blood as they’re disciplined by the foundry’s master (Austin Wai), which undercuts the earlier eroticism.

The Blade settles into a style that borrows liberally from horror cinema. After the grisly opening scene, the same bandits torment a woman, who is then saved by a monk skilled in kung fu, in the film’s first major fight. Tsui alternates between a handheld camera and high overhead shots that allow us to observe the action at length, with quick takes of panicked animals and a pan over a cart full of carved demonic heads, leaving little doubt that this world is ferocious and frightening—especially after the bandits ultimately mount the slain monk’s head on a pole.

The film’s revenge plot is set in motion when the hero, Ding On (Vincent Zhao), learns the truth about the death of his father by overhearing Siu Ling discussing it; the man was murdered when Ding On was a baby by the tattooed assassin Flying Dragon (Xiong Xin-xin). Furious at having been denied this knowledge before, Ding On bursts from the gloom to confront Siu Ling, in a scene of high-contrast red-and-black lighting backed with a soundtrack of howling wind. In The Blade, truth revealed is not some high-minded ideal but one more example of the dreadful secrets life can hold.

Intent on tracking down Flying Dragon, Ding On steals his father’s broken blade (the title character, as it were) and leaves the foundry. Siu Ling goes after him but encounters the bandits lying in wait in a bamboo scaffolding, surrounded by shadows and smoke. Siu Ling’s horse is ensnared, she is thrown, and the bandits advance, their intentions clear . . . until Ding On intervenes. The fight that follows is a maelstrom of action, using Tsui’s trademark fast editing (he coedited The Blade), cutting between shots of rushing bodies and close-ups of grimacing faces. When Ding On loses his arm, the light goes scarlet for a few seconds, but the worst is yet to come: In the film’s single most excruciating scene—and perhaps its fullest excoriation of jianghu—Ding On races after his severed arm as the bandit leader drags it away. When Ding On catches up to his opponent, he finishes him off not with a heroic blow but by tearing the man’s throat out with his teeth.

The remainder of The Blade is driven largely by the actions of two women: Siu Ling, who goes in search of Ding On after he vanishes, and Black Head (Chung Bik-ha), the capering, impish farmer who nurses him back to health and provides him with the manual that lets him gain skill as a one-armed swordsman. Black Head—who can perhaps best be described in today’s terms as nonbinary—is another example of Tsui’s interest in exploring gender. Although not as powerful or charismatic as Brigitte Lin’s transgender Asia the Invincible from Film Workshop’s Swordsman II and The East Is Red (a.k.a. Swordsman III, 1993), Black Head is The Blade’s most intriguing character—determined to survive by hard work but compassionate enough to form a strong bond with Ding On. Siu Ling, meanwhile, is finally forced to take up the sword herself when her mission to find Ding On becomes more dangerous. “I hate myself for knowing that I was nothing” before, she tells us. As Siu Ling and Black Head, Song’s and Chung’s performances counterbalance the masculine violence with moments of compassion and playfulness; their presence provides a necessary relief from the film’s otherwise unrelenting bleakness.

In her travels, Siu Ling (with her guide, Iron Head, played by Moses Chan) encounters the harsh realities of life outside the safety of the foundry, learning about misogyny, sex (in an inn that also serves as a brothel), male jealousy (Iron Head gets into a fight over a sex worker), and violent oppression (as bandits constantly descend on towns and settlements). Meanwhile, Ding On trains (to a soundtrack driven by wild percussion and vocal grunts)—while surviving with Black Head and killing other outlaws—until he’s ready to take on Flying Dragon.

For the climactic fight, Tsui uses many of the tropes of the traditional, Shaw Brothers–era martial-arts film: slow motion, fast zooms into faces, spurting blood, whooshing sound effects. His two leads, Vincent Zhao and Xiong Xin-xin, were both champion martial artists before moving into acting, and both had worked with Tsui before; Zhao had even been chosen to replace Jet Li in Tsui’s Once Upon a Time in China series (1991–94) as the historic hero Wong Fei-hung. Given their skills, the fight is acrobatic and even surprisingly graceful, sometimes more like dancing than lethal combat; but Tsui also cuts back to Siu Ling, watching the fight and contemplating her own revenge. The fight ends with both men whirling their blades on chains as Flying Dragon continues to taunt Ding On. The camera and editing are sometimes dizzying in their speed and motion. “It is not meant to be seen clearly,” Tsui said of the action in The Blade. “The fighting is but fleeting impressions.”

After Flying Dragon is finally vanquished, the victorious Ding On departs with Black Head. Siu Ling is left to spend the rest of her life alone in the abandoned foundry. In the last shots of The Blade, she’s old and silver-haired, still pondering the meaning of jianghu, though also acknowledging that it doesn’t really matter.

Although it is now regarded as one of Tsui’s best movies and frequently appears on lists of the greatest action films ever made, The Blade performed poorly at the box office in its initial release, a failure Tsui blamed on the film’s lack of major stars (despite the fine, intense performances, especially from Zhao). Perhaps the real reason is that local audiences, already feeling the pressure of the coming handover, weren’t ready for a film that both deconstructed a beloved Hong Kong movie staple and expressed their collective anxiety at the prospect of incoming hordes. Fortunately, The Blade has found a new global life in the twenty-first century, when perhaps we have the perspective to appreciate its bleak yet exhilarating brilliance.