The Silk Road (Dun-Huang, 1988)
Sato Junya
Japan, China
143 mins, color, Japanese (English subtitles)
Never thought that the Chinese or the Japanese could produce crap that can compete with Conan and win hands down? See DUN-HUANG and marvel at the inanity of plot and action, and their combined onslaught on common sense. And it took a collaboration between the two countries to produce this worthless film?
The year is 1026 and some students from Western China on their way to Xixia are shanghaied into the Chinese unit of prince Li Yuanhao's army. Now this prince is the evil sort, who wants to dominate the world or, failing that, at least the entire Silk Road. The main hapless student is Zhao Xingde (Sato), who has to be the worst actor ever---one does not need to understand Japanese to figure out that he is pathetic; he barely ekes out an emotion, and his best performance is when he was lying face down in the puddle of water. Xingde is "recruited" as a soldier, pretends to fight in several truly awful battle sequences, and manages to weasel his way into the good graces of his commander Zhu Wangli (Nishida). When the army sacks the next Uighur fortress, Xingde finds princess Tsurpia (Nakagawa), the daughter of its ruler, and saves her. She naturally falls in love with him and they try to elope but lose their way in the desert and come back to the fortress where Xingde is nearly killed as a traitor. He is not. Instead, they send him off the capital to study Xixian. He vouches eternal love to the princess, entrusts her to Wangli, and departs to write a dictionary. Naturally, when he returns his beloved is betrothed to prince Yuanhao and our scribe has to write their wedding vows. Tsurpia (naturally) kills herself because she is forced to wear an atrocious wedding gown. The groom declares her death a ritual sacrifice and promptly sacks several other cities that look remarkably undistinguished. Xingde is devastated and becomes a librarian. Wangli, however, has other plans (did I forget to tell you that he had fallen in (unrequited?) love with Tsurpia himself? If I did, sorry, the film also neglected to mention it until too late in the plot) and wants to kill Yuanhao. He plots, fails, Dun-Huang (that's the city, you moron) is destroyed, Xingde saves the library and the movie ends.
To recap, we have (i) a story of student that goes nowhere; (ii) a love story that goes nowhere; (iii) a love triangle that goes nowhere; (iv) a revenge plot that goes nowhere; (v) a tale of conquest that goes nowhere. Actually, at the very end we find out that the movie was ALL ABOUT SAVING 50,000 SUTRAS! Wow! Isn't that something? Well, it may be based on the story about the discovery of the sutras, but I am having a hard time believing that the events depicted in the film have any semblance to reality. Pathetic plot, pathetic performances, pathetic cinematography, pathetic music, and pathetic philosophy. This film is utterly worthless and can be considered offensive. Avoid.
March 9, 2001. BLS