Landscapes,Trees and Martial Arts

Posted by Georgene A. Bramlage Jul 23, 2007

I settled in to watch my weekend video loan from the local library expecting one experience, but gaining another entirely. I borrowed House of Flying Daggers (Shi mian mai fu), released January 2005 in the USA, believing the film to be in the same martial arts / wuxia genre as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo hu cang long), released December 2000.

House of Flying Daggers, in my humble opinion, was every bit as good as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The plot line, told in in the Mandarin Chinese language (English subtitles), is a simple one - the eternal lstory of a love triangle doomed to diaster. Love combines here with the age-old appeal of wuxia - knights, swords and sorcery - photographed within the physical dimensions of flowering meadows, deciduous hardwood forests and bamboo forests.

House of Flying Daggers the story of three people who suffer for their passions. They embark upon a journey that is both emotional and physical within vast meadows, deciduous forests and bamboo groves. The scenes in the meadows and deciduous forests – birch (Betula spp.) , beeches (Fagus sylvatica) and aspens (Populus tremula 'Erecta' ) - made me gasp! They looked almost like western MA and Vermont, my neighbor to the north.

Unfortunately, researching House of Flying Daggers locations on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB),

I found that the meadows and deciduous forest locations for the movie are in KossivNational Parkand Lvov, Ukraine. I have yet to find if there is anything quite so similar in China.

The bamboo forest scenes were, however, a fantastic surprise. I learned from the Director's notes that these forests are an inextricable part of martial arts films. House of Flying Daggers contains several long Chinese martial arts sequences set in the Tea Mountain Bamboo Sea Scenery Park, Yongchuen, Chongqing, China. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon shows sequences shot in Anji Bamboo Forest, Jiangsu, China. Apparently, both of these bamboo locations are popular Chinese tourist attractions. Perhaps, one day, I will be able to visit these magnificent groves.

The culminating fight scenes are set in the Ukraine meadows They appear to begin in autumn and end in stark, symbolic beauty of a heavy winter snowfall. The movie ended, for me, with a sigh.

If you have an opportunity to see this movie let me know what you think. Thanks!

Please read Landscapes, Sunflowers and the Movies for a review of another great horticulturally charged movie. Thanks!

©Georgene A. Bramlage, July 2007.