TAIPEI, Sept 7 — What was the biggest challenge faced by the cast of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “The Assassin”?
If you said mastering the choreography of the action sequences, you guessed wrong.
In an interview with The Straits Times newspaper, the film’s male lead Chang Chen admitted mastering classical Mandarin proved to be the bigger hurdle.
The 38-year-old Taiwanese actor, who has worked with the likes of Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai, Kim Ki Duk and John Woo, said there was a “certain degree of difficulty”, but he simply took it in his stride and memorised his lines.
Chang was quoted as saying, “It was more important to think about the emotions of the characters: What was he feeling when he was saying those words? Where do I put the emotional stresses?”
In the drama set during the Tang dynasty, Shu Qi plays the titular assassin, Nie Yinniang, who has been sent to take down her cousin Tian Ji’an, a powerful lord played by Chang.
The film won Hou the Best Director gong at the Cannes Film Festival in May.
