In this essay I am going to compare and contrast two films 'Hero' and 'The World'. As a viewer I find these two films of two different genres. These two films portray the idea of nationalism from two very different perspective and background. Also they are based on two different periods of time as well as purpose. In terms of purpose ‘Hero’ is more on ‘inspirational’ side whereas ‘The world’ is on the side of ‘creating realization’ This essay is my personal respond to the key question – ‘how do they portray two different ideas of Chinese nationalism?’ by analyzing the different aspects of the films. From the perspective of a viewer I found that ‘Hero’ communicates the idea of sacrificing the individual for uniting the nation. This film tries …show more content…
The film is based on the story of Jing Ke's assassination attempt on the King of Qin in 227 BC. I found this film in the genre of tragedy but according to Chinese cinema this movie belongs to ‘Wuxia’. Wuxia is a genre of chine cinema that deals with martial arts, sorcery, and chivalry. The plot of the movie is the sacrifice for the nation. The movie stared with the scene of confrontation between an assassin supposedly named as ‘nameless’ and the king of Qin emperor. According to the story line ‘nameless’ is being consider as a fighter who fought for the king and defeated his three biggest enemies Sky, flying snow and broken sword who were assassins. In the film ‘nameless’ wants to seek revenge from the king as he has killed his family. With the progress of the story, he started to narrate his cooked up story of how he killed those three assassins. After hearing the story the king told him that though he had been very good in telling the story of his so called ‘glorious success’, he has done a big mistake by underestimating him. Here the director tries to show the wisdom of the king which was not acknowledged by others. One of the turning points of the movie was the king’s description of the same story from different perspective, thinking and observation. Here nameless couldn’t fool the king as he didn’t know that the king knew them enough to understand the situation and their actions. Then, there comes another twist which was revealed by the nameless and that was the advice of ‘broken sword’. He told the king how ‘broken sword’ had asked him to reconsider his decision of killing the king. In that point, a past incident was revealed where “broken sword’ willingly lost the opportunity of killing the king. However, the director brings out the good side of the king by showing that his only intention was to unite the country nothing else. In the climax of the movie 'nameless' sacrificed him for the union of