The Assassin (2015 film)

The Assassin is a 2015 wuxia film co-written and directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. A Taiwan/China/Hong Kong co-production, the film is loosely based on the late eight-century martial arts story "Nie Yinniang" by Pei Xing. It stars Shu Qi and Chang Chen.

The Assassin premiered on 21 May 2015 at the Cannes Film Festival, where Hou won Best Director. It was released in China and Hong Kong on 27 August 2015, and a day later in Taiwan. It was Taiwan's entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards, but was not nominated. Critically acclaimed, The Assassin was named the best film of 2015 by Sight & Sound magazine. It was Hou's final film before his retirement in 2023 after it was announced that he was battling with dementia.

Plot
The Assassin is loosely based on the late seventh-century martial arts story "Nie Yinniang" by Pei Xing, a core text in Chinese swordsmanship and wuxia fiction. The film is set in China during the Zhenyuan (貞元) reign period (785 to 805) in the middle of the Tang dynasty, a few years after the An Lushan rebellion (755 to 763). The circuit of Weibo, though nominally a part of the Tang Empire, is de facto ruled independently by military governor Tian Ji'an.

The film centers on Nie Yinniang, an assassin who is directed to slay corrupt government officials by her master, Jiaxin, a nun who raised her from the age of ten. When Yinniang displays mercy by failing to kill during her duties, Jiaxin punishes her with a ruthless assignment designed to test Yinniang's resolve: she is sent to the distant province/circuit of Weibo in northern China to kill its military governor, her cousin Tian Ji'an, to whom she was betrothed as a child.

As Princess Jiacheng recounts to her when she arrives, the betrothal was a consequence of Jiacheng's own marriage. Jiacheng was married off to an official of Weibo to quell unrest in Weibo, whereupon she adopted her husband's son, Tian Ji'an as her own. At her request, Tian Ji'an was betrothed to Yinniang at the age of fifteen. However, the betrothal was canceled in favor of a politically pressing marriage, and Yinniang was sent off to live with Princess Jiacheng's sister the nun Jiaxin. Yinniang wrestles with her mission to kill Tian Ji'an for much of the film.

When Yinniang's uncle Tian Xing expresses views Tian Ji'an finds offensive in a meeting of state, Tian Ji'an demotes Tian Xing and sends him away to Linqing under the protection of Nie Feng, Yinniang's father. They are soon ambushed, but Yinniang arrives in time to rescue them. She accompanies the wounded survivors to a village where they meet a young mirror-polisher.

Eventually, Yinniang concludes that killing Tian Ji'an while his sons are young would plunge Weibo into chaos and instead protects him on the journey where she was supposed to kill him. The film concludes with Yinniang leaving behind the strictures of Jiaxin and the high politics of Weibo, instead joining the young mirror-polisher on a journey as his guardian.

Cast

 * Shu Qi as Nie Yinniang (聶隱娘), the eponymous assassin
 * Chang Chen as Tian Ji'an (田季安), cousin to Nie Yinniang, formerly betrothed to her, and military governor (Jiedushi), ruling Weibo Circuit.
 * Zhou Yun as Lady Tian, Tian Ji'an's wife (田元氏/精精兒).
 * Satoshi Tsumabuki as the mirror polisher (磨鏡少年)
 * Ethan Juan as Xia Jing (夏靖), Tian Ji'an's bodyguard
 * Hsieh Hsin-Ying as Huji (瑚姬), Tian Ji'an's concubine and a dancer
 * Ni Dahong as Nie Feng (聶鋒), Nie Yinniang's father and Tian Ji'an's provost
 * Yong Mei as Lady Nie Tian (聶田氏), Nie Yinniang's mother
 * Fang-Yi Sheu as Princess Jiacheng and her twin sister, the princess Jiaxin turned Taoist nun (嘉誠公主/道姑/嘉信公主)
 * Lei Zhenyu as Tian Xing (田興)
 * Jacques Picoux as Kong Kong (空空兒)

Production
The film received several subsidies from the Taiwanese government: in 2005 of NT$15 million (US$501,000), in 2008 of NT$80 million (US$2.67 million) and in 2010 of NT$20 million (US$668,000). However, over the production, Hou encountered various budget problems; thus more than half of the film's final budget came from China, a first for Hou. As of September 2012, its budget was CN¥90 million (US$14.9 million).

The film was filmed in several places in China, mainly in Hubei province, Inner Mongolia and north-eastern China. Hou recalled that he was "blown away" when he saw "those silver birch forests and lakes: it was like being transported into a Chinese classical painting."

Release
The first press conference of The Assassin since its Cannes premiere was held in Shanghai on 16 June 2015, where Hou and the film's cast discussed their Cannes experience and their upcoming promotional activities for the film.

The film premiered in Beijing on 23 August 2015, ahead of its nationwide release on 27 August 2015. For its American release, the film's distribution rights were acquired by independent distribution company Well Go USA Entertainment on 11 May 2015, and the film was released on 16 October 2015.

Home media
The Assassin was released on Blu-ray and DVD in Hong Kong on 20 December 2015. The North American release was 26 January 2016 and included four behind-the-scenes featurettes regarding the film.

Box office
The film earned CN¥61.385 million at the Chinese box office. Worldwide box office is around U.S. $12 million.

Critical response
The Assassin opened to critical acclaim. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 80% rating, based on 102 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The site's consensus states: "The Assassin's thrilling visuals mark a fresh highlight for director Hsiao-hsien Hou, even if its glacial pace may keep some viewers at arm's length." Metacritic reports an 81 out of 100 rating, based on 29 critics. Sight & Sound magazine ranked The Assassin as the best film of 2015 based on a poll of 168 critics from around the world. The Online Film Critics Society called the film the best foreign language film of 2015. It also ranked 50th in a 2016 BBC poll of the 21st century's greatest films.

New York Times co-chief film critic Manohla Dargis called the film "staggeringly lovely" at Cannes, describing it as having "held the Wednesday-night audience in rapturous silence until the closing credits, when thunderous applause and booming bravos swept through the auditorium like a wave". Variety's chief film critic Justin Chang highly praises the film, saying "The sheer depth of its formal artistry places The Assassin in a rather more rarefied realm.... Hou implicitly grasps the expressive power of stillness and reserve, the ways in which silence can build tension and heighten interest. Above all, he never loses sight of the fact that the bodies he moves so fluidly and intuitively through space are human, and remain so even in death. ... Hou Hsiao-hsien proves himself to be not just the creator of this assassin but an unmistakably kindred spirit." On Film Business Asia, Derek Elley gave it nine out of ten, saying that "Hou Hsiao-hsien's first wuxia masterfully blends the genre's essence and his own style". Deborah Young of The Hollywood Reporter said: "Hou Hsiao-hsien brings a pure, idiosyncratic vision to the martial arts genre". Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of The A.V. Club describes the "enigmatic and often mesmerizing" Assassin as "one of the most flat-out beautiful movies of the last decade, and also one of the most puzzling". He states, "Mood is key here...[the film is] all muted and subsumed by a poetic atmosphere that's radical even by Hou's standards...It's a movie most will be intoxicated by, but few will be able to confidently say that they understand—which may be the point, part and parcel with its conception of a world of gestures and values so absolute as to be nearly unknowable."

John Esther of UR Chicago gave the film a more mixed review, saying "the real strength (and strain) of The Assassin is the mise-en-scène by Hou and director of photographer Mark Lee Ping Bing (In the Mood for Love; Renoir)" but was critical of the glossy depiction of the environment, "The costumes, the people, the woods, the art, and the interiors are relentlessly pretty. Other than human nature, The Assassin suggests there was nothing ugly to witness during this period in time."

Sarah Cronin of the British magazine Electric Sheep writes "The intricacies of the story are bewildering, with the 'who' and the 'why' only obliquely revealed as the film lingers on. But rather than lending The Assassin an air of intrigue, these mysteries seem pointlessly and frustratingly obtuse, with the most potent symbolism left to be teased out of a broken piece of jade, while not enough is done to bring the characters to life, to make them whole. Hou Hsiao-hsien deliberately avoids giving its audience any of the pleasures of wuxia, but its take on the genre offers little, and feels like a pale shadow of fellow auteur Wong Kar Wai's Ashes of Time. It looks gorgeous, but there's a shallowness to its beauty. The Assassin, unfortunately, is more still life than cinema."

In his review for the Los Angeles Review of Books, Victor Fan concluded, "The Assassin is indeed like a Ming vase, beautiful — and — empty. Those who love this film can see only the vase, and those who dislike this film can see only the emptiness inside it."