It’s amazing what a difference seeing a movie in the theatre can make from the DVD. I don’t usually get the chance to see a movie before it comes out in theatres, but I got the Hero DVD from my brother a few years ago before it was released in the US. It’s a great movie. The most significant difference on the big screen apart from just the level of detail visible was the sound (you could hear practically every raindrop in the Go scene) and the translation was worlds better. (With the notable exception of ‘tian xia’ becoming the much weaker ‘our land’ instead of ‘all under heaven.’)

I had come up with the beginnings of a theory of colour in the film on my first two viewings of the DVD, but I wasn’t really able to complete anything until seeing the more insightful translation of the American release. (Possible spoiler warning)

Jet Li
Basically the narrative can be divided into five threads: black, red, blue, green, and white. Each thread is vividly dominated by its color, especially in background setting and costume. The black thread is ‘the present’ in the film’s narrative. The white thread begins as a flashback, but catches up to the black thread and becomes the present at the end of the film. The red, blue, and green threads are all flashbacks, with the green being a flashback within the white.

I believe the key to interpreting the narrative is through an understanding of the five Chinese elements: fire, water, wood, earth, and metal.

The red thread obviously represents fire. In it, the characters are portrayed as passionate, and there is a great deal of rage. This is the only thread in which blood is shown.

The blue thread stands in stark contrast: the characters who were previously portrayed as rash fighters are shown to be calm and collected. The water thread ends around a fight over a stunning mountain lake. Even though the scene is a sword battle, there is a remarkable amount of tranquility shown.

The third and shortest thread is the green. It is a flashback to what is chronologically the earliest point in the story in which two of the characters begin to expand in their skills and mature a great deal. Growth is the dominant theme in the wood thread.

Where I got confused in the Chinese DVD is how the last two threads. Now I think I understand that the black thread represents the earth element. In the film, black is always associated with the Qin empire. It really makes sense for this to be the earth element, since land is what Qin seeks to control. The white thread which comes to meld with the black is that of metal. At first I didn’t understand this, but the white metal is that of swords. It is the thread in which the truth is revealed, and it also concludes with the laying aside of the sword. In the end, the Hero(es) must sacrafice everything for the good of ‘all under heaven.’ White gets subsumed into Black.

There’s more to be said, like which of the three main flashbacks fit into which of the three stages of swordsmanship, but you can figure that out on your own.

If you’ll pardon me, I’ll close with a quotation from Jet Li on Hero and its meaning: “Whenever I work in the United States, the young people say, ‘Yeah, Jet Li! You kick ass,’ because I’ve only shown them that martial arts hurt people. I haven’t had the opportunity to show them that the important thing is not kicking people’s asses. If you understand the yin and yang balance maybe you will grow up.”
How’s that for a positive action-hero role model?