Tai Chi Zero or Taichi 0: From Zero To Hero 太極之從零開始 (2012)

film

Quite simply, Tai Chi Zero or Taichi 0: From Zero To Hero, 太極之從零開始 (2012) is exuberant fun from start to finish. To understand the approach taken by the director Stephen Fung and the screenwriter Kuo-fu Chen, you need to understand what can go wrong with a smörgåsbord. This is the Scandinavian approach to a buffet meal. When you enter the restaurant, you are confronted by multiple dishes. Done well, there’s a real synergy between all the different tastes and flavours. Done badly and, despite there being one or two dishes you find enjoyable, the entire experience is something of a disaster. The team behind this film have done their homework and noted all the different styles and techniques that can be put together in a film. When triggering a flashback, for example, they know they can change the aspect, shoot in black and white and use a shaky camera to suggest a home movie. Or they can more generally fade from a freeze frame into a pop-art image, use comic book animation, borrow the video-game need to keep fighting to get to the next level, and so on. When showing kung fu, they can use slow-motion and draw the flow of chi on the screen so we can all follow the logic of the moves and see their consequences. I could go on, but you get the idea. This film is literally a mosaic of different methods but, so elegantly have they been put together that the result rises above mere collage as a pasting of bits on the same screen. This is film-making art, blending the disparate elements into one of the best tai chi, kung fu films I’ve seen for a long time. Indeed, to complete the irreverence to traditional conceits, it’s directly metafictional in using the subtitles to introduce the different actors by their names and not their roles, and to mention odd facts about their real-world backgrounds.

Yuan Xiaochao getting the maximum leverage

 

So what about the plot? Well, the poster alleges this is steampunk but that’s not strictly true. Although the track-laying machine is an exaggeration of what even modern technology can achieve, all the basic machines on display are more or less in period. With the exception of the central machine, there’s nothing so completely anachronistic that it qualifies as steampunk. What we have is a very traditional kung fu film in which China’s culture is being subverted by evil Westerners. In this case, they want to build a railroad and, through local agents, are literally not going to let anything stand in their way. It’s a standard plot having been recycled through films like Tsui Hark’s great series Once Upon a Time in China (1991) which invites us to lament the end of an era in which tradition was made redundant by a different cultural approach supported by foreign technology. The trilogy shows the worst effects of colonialism and the cultural imperialism that accompanied it.

Angelababy prepared to take on all-comers

 

Hence, this film shows us an idyllic village where traditional values have been fiercely guarded for generations. After a long prologue in which we see the birth and training of our hero in the hard fighting styles, Yang Lu Chan (Yuan Xiaochao) arrives hoping to learn the soft style for which the village is famous. He has a serious medical problem and, if he persists in using the hard styles, he will kill himself. Unfortunately, the villagers have a strict policy not to teach outsiders. The village is therefore a metaphor for China, resisting outside influences and preserving the “old ways”. To prove the value of the old ways, the village is then subject to destabilising forces. Our hero will not take no for an answer and learns the core of the soft tai chi style by fighting the villagers and learning from what they do. This is not a theft of their knowledge. Rather it’s using the local strength against itself. If they did not fight him, he could not learn from them.

Tony Leung Ka Fai showing us the traditional way is best

 

The second challenge comes from within. Fang Zijing (Eddie Peng) was a villager who went overseas and learned foreign ways. He returns to the village as an agent for the East India Company to persuade them to allow the railway to pass through. As a child, he was loved by Chen Yunia (Angelababy), but he’s now being backed by a British woman and her access to British technology. So this is a film about balance. Fang Zijing’s rejection must be set against Yang Lu Chan’s assimilation of the old ways. Similarly, the hard fighting styles will not work against armour-plating. You need the soft approach to slip inside its defences and then use the machine’s internal energy against it. The strategy comes from Master Chen (Tony Leung Ka Fai) who hopes to use the outsider Yang Lu Chan to defeat the British. That way, no-one will blame the village. Unfortunately, his daughter Chen Yunia joins in the fight directly, fueled by anger and jealousy for Fang Zijing. This leads to a direct attack in retaliation and gives us a chance to see Master Chen in action.

Eddie Peng cultural traitor taking on British ways

 

I accept Tai Chi Zero may not be to everyone’s taste. It’s a halfway house between the traditional Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) style and the more Western comic-book fantasies like Scott Pilgrim vs the World (2010). The fighting choreographed by Sammo Hung is terrific, helped by the casting of Yuan Xiaochao, a former Wushu world champion. So, putting all this together, I left the cinema with a big smile on my face, looking forward to the second half which is due later this year. Yes, Stephen Fung filmed the two halves back-to-back and, if the clips are anything to go by, this may actually be more steampunkish with airpower adding to large cannons arriving by sea. Obviously, Western strategists recognise you can always defeat hand-to-hand prowess by aerial bombing and artillery fire from a distance.

 

Other films featuring Tony Leung Ka Fai are:
Bruce Lee, My Brother (2010)
Cold War or 寒戰 (2012)
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)
Tai Chi Hero or 太极2英雄崛起 (2012)