As the Chinese auteur’s new blockbuster goes online, it’s time to catch up on his greatest hits…
It was buried so inconspicuously in the list of forthcoming home entertainment releases, with a pretty inconspicuous title to boot, that I nearly overlooked it. But there it is: after nearly a year of eager anticipation from arthouse auteurists and wuxia genre geeks alike, Zhang Yimou’s Shadow (Universal, 15) is skipping
UK cinemas and heading straight into your living rooms from Monday.
Notable films going directly to small-screen platforms is a preoccupation of this column, though they’re often small-scale indies that don’t suffer too much from the downsizing. (The breath-on-your-neck intimacy of last week’s featured film Her Smell, for example, plays well in private.) Shadow is different: an out-and-out Chinese blockbuster, it’s a panoramic period spectacle crying out for the sound and fury of a cinema. Fifteen years ago, Zhang’s period martial arts dazzler House of Flying Daggers made nearly £6m in
British cinemas; the idea of a similar project from the director being demoted in this
fashion would have been unthinkable.