China
as a unified country did not exist until the third century
B.C. Instead, various kingdoms rose and fell until, when the
film begins, there were seven kingdoms, the most powerful
of which was the Zhou dynasty, which ruled China from 1122
to 255 B.C. In The Emperor and the Assassin
(Jing ke ci qin wang), we observe how the Ch'in kingdom conquered
three rival kingdoms in the north. Kaige Chen, who won a Political
Film Society special award in 1993 for Farewell, My
Concubine, directs this epic production with a cast
of thousands. Divided into five chapters, the first part deals
with Ch'in's conquest in 246 B.C. of the Han kingdom, and
we are introduced to all the characters in the court who are
to become important later in the movie. King Ying Zheng (played
by Xuejian Li) has a vision of a unified China that will provide
a lasting peace and build a wall on the north to keep out
the barbarians, but he must pay a tragic emotional price to
fulfill his ambitions. (The king's name is usually transliterated
Ch'in Shihuang, who as the film indicates was the bastard
son of a prostitute by a merchant.) Fearful of rivals and
of those who could expose his true origins, one of his first
acts in the movie to is relieve Prime Minister Lu Buwei (played
by the director himself) of his duties and place him under
house arrest; as it turns out later, Lu Buwei is the king's
father. The Prince of the Yan kingdom (played by Sun Zhou)
is held hostage in order to provide leverage against the forces
of Yan. Chapter 2 deals with the king's relations with Lady
Zhao (played by Gong Li), his concubine, who misses the good
old days when she and the king were commoners in love. Accordingly,
she concocts a plot. She first orders a lower court official
to scar her left cheek with a branding iron, and then persuades
with the king that she could tell the Prince of the Yan kingdom
that she had been punished and exiled, if the two were allowed
to leave for Yan, and the Prince would surely send her back
with an assassin to kill the king. Proof that Yan wanted to
assassinate the ruler of Ch'in would, she reasoned, would
thus cause the people of Yan to accept peaceful merger with
Ch'in without provoking the southern kingdoms to unite against
the Ch'in juggernaut. Chapter 3 focuses on the Yan dynasty,
in which Jing Ke (played by Zhang Fengyi) the best man for
the job of assassin refuses to do any more killing, thereby
frustrating the intrigue. Lady Zhao, however, falls in love
with Jing Ke, and they live together. Chapter 4, called "The
Children," is about a court mutiny led by the effete Marquis
Changxin (played by Wang Zhiwen), who plots with the king's
mother to kill the king so that his four-year-old son will
become king, the Marquis will serve as regent, and her native
land of Zhou will be spared annihilation. However, the Marquis
tells the former Prime Minister, who in turn leaks word of
the plot to the king, and the mutiny is foiled. In Chapter
5, Lady Zhao learns that the Ch'in armies are about to subdue
the Zhou kingdom; since she was born there, she hurries to
stop the war. When she arrives, it is too late; the people
of Zhou, including children buried alive, consist of corpses
in a scene reminiscent of the field of the dead in Sergei
Eisenstein's Alexandr Nevsky. Jing Ke finally
agrees to assassinate King Ying Zheng, goes to the Ch'in court,
but he is unsuccessful. Credits at the end note that the body
of Ying Zheng is preserved in a tomb at Xian, and the seven
kingdoms were united in 221 B.C. by Ying Zheng, who thus becomes
what is known as the title of the film in some countries --
"The First Emperor of China." However, the credits note that
the first emperor died in 220 B.C., and the Ch'in empire is
dissolved by 211 B.C. Many themes in the film resonate with
the present, such as the "manifest destiny" of China to become
unified, suggesting that Taiwan has two options as China grows
in military strength -- a peaceful surrender or an immense
bloodbath of the sort depicted in the film. Indeed, Chairman
Mao revered the first emperor. However, the idea that brutal
war will bring about the good life also calls to mind not
only certain Shakespearean plots, which the director had in
mind, but also Plutarch's Cyneas, who noted that the good
life could be obtained far more quickly if megalomaniacs would
jettison their grandiose military ambitions. MH
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