How to evaluate Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers?

House of Flying Daggers shows the consistent style of Zhang Yimou's films: exquisite scene selection.

Peony Square in the film is a high-level entertainment place in the Tang Dynasty. The whole 360-degree circular hall is magnificent in atmosphere, and all the carved beams and painted buildings are exquisitely carved with various peony shapes. The bamboo forest shrouded in mist in the film was shot from the bamboo sea in Yongchuan, Chongqing; Brilliant sea of flowers, silver birch forest and picturesque distant mountains are all taken from Kesovo National Forest Park in Ukraine.

The clothing of House of Flying Daggers has broken through the vulgar style used in previous martial arts movies, showing uniqueness from the fabric to the style, such as the Aauto Quicker coat and hat in Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro. In the scene of Peony Square, Takeshi Kaneshiro's exquisite embroidered satin trousers and boots, Zhang Ziyi's long skirt, three-meter-long sleeves and decorations all show the ten thousand customs of that era.

Most of the location of the whole movie was shot in the forest. Because there are a lot of action scenes to shoot, it is impossible to choose dense forests or bamboo forests. Therefore, on the one hand, the photographer uses a suitable optical lens to express the density of the forest, on the other hand, he uses a long focal length lens to follow the characters, which greatly compresses the space, so what is presented on the screen is a picture with a strong sense of speed seen by the audience, which has also become one of the highlights of the film.