I am always on the lookout for movies outside Hollywood and therefore was really excited to find this movie as original version with subtitles; I think I haven't seen any Chinese movies before, when it comes to Asian Cinema, only Japanese and Korean cinema. So I had to visit this show to see 影 (pronounced 'Ying').

The movie plays during the period of the "Three Kingdoms" (220-280) in China: The kingdom of Pei lost the important city Jing Zhou to the neighboring kingdom Yang when the commander Ziyu loses a duel to the commander Yang Chang. Ziyu yearns for revenge and wants to recapture Jing Zhou, however the King of Pei, Peiliang is spineless and rather stomaches every disgrace even if it leads to his peoples contempt, as long as he can keep the peace. And thus, in his shadows his subordinates begin to plot and work on their own goals...

While the trailer suggest this movie to be action-packed including foolish martial arts stunts (if you watch the trailer you'll see armies fighting with umbrellas that have razor blades instead of cloth or use them to slide down slopes). However, this is misleading. Zhang Yimou's movie nearly feels a bit arthousy, with a large number of really slow paced scenes, some scenes being totally silent, short dialogues where the subtile facial expressions and subcontext need to be taken into account. Actually, the director trusts the viewer with as much intelligence that he leaves a lot of things unsaid. Instead, the movie focuses on great imagery, and presents a visual feast for your eyes. Also, the whole movie plays with a lot of symbolism. You'll obviously see the "Yin and Yang"-Symbol, with "Yin" meaning wet, feminine, passive, quiet and "Yang" the opposites. And our shadow fighters attack the kingdom of "Yang", using a new, feminine fighting style; all these characteristics can be found and seem to be easily distributed to the different characters, but soon you'll see, that as Yin and Yang, positions will switch, making the story more complex and interesting. Thus also the color grading is focused on the colors black, white and grey, giving the movie a different look that I have never seen. Besides the imagery that looks like Chineese paintings, and all those symbolism we also have a great set and costume design. And last but not least, the music and how it is integrated into the movie is also phenomenal.

On the negative side, I have to say that in the beginning I had a real hard time to get into the movie. The flick starts with a few text screens and than just throws you in, and hearing a lot of foreign names as well as seeing a couple of people that actually look alike (in clothing, hairstyle, etc.) made it not easier. So the first round about 20 minutes I was a bit lost and had my problems following. But I am not sure if I can count this as a negative aspect of the movie. Same goes for rather strange cultural aspects, e.g. there is a scene, where the King asks the commander to play an instrument and sing with his wife, and she refuses, excusing that she has distracted her husband from his duties and that, if she has to play she'll cut of her fingers. She then plays and after that grabs the knife. Her husband stops her and instead cuts of his hair, which is filmed in such a dramatic way, and the entire court is extremely shocked to see this happening. And I was like "uhm... what's just happening?"

These things made it a bit hard in the beginning, but after getting into the movie you'll get a really great move that is worth watching. I'll rate it 8/10 points.