Political Meaning and Criticism
This film has faced criticism, as well as praise from abroad as a perceived pro-totalitarian and pro-Chinese reunification subtext. Critics also cited as evidence the approval that had been given to the film by the government of the People's Republic of China. These critics argued that the ulterior meaning of the film was triumph of security and stability over liberty and human rights, analogous to the "Asian values" concept that gained brief popularity in the 1990s.
The film's director, Zhang Yimou, purportedly withdrew from the 1999 Cannes Film Festival to protest similar criticism. Zhang Yimou himself had maintained that he had absolutely no political points to make.
Read more about this topic: Hero (2002 film)
Famous quotes containing the words political, meaning and/or criticism:
“The political truths declared in that solemn manner acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free Government, and as they become incorporated with national sentiment, counteract the impulses of interest and passion.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“In our definitions, we grope after the spiritual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning of spiritual is real; that law which executes itself, which works without means, and which cannot be conceived as not existing.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)