A good film, with stunning
cinematography. However, if you are expecting to see a
martial arts film, be warned: this is a
fantasy with martial arts elements. The acting is incredible when you consider that they were using an
extinct form of
Mandarin Chinese (at least according to the
Boston Phoenix) which is like a
foreign language to them. Imagine
Nicholas Cage trying to do a movie using
Middle English and I think you get a rough correlation.
Shunryu Suzuki used to tell a relevant story. One disciple bragged to another (they had different teachers) that his teacher could do all sorts of supernatural things. The second disciple replied that his teacher could do even more amazing things. The first disciple challenged him to name them, and he said: "When my teacher eats, he eats. When he sleeps, he sleeps."