Three Kingdoms movie review

Its a bit of a stretch to call this a movie review. The actual fact of the matter is that I watched a movie and it gave me an idea, and now I'm going to write about this idea.

Three Kingdoms is a Chinese action movie (I presume out of Hong Kong) set in the last decades preceding the original unification of China. Early in the movie we are introduced to the main character, for simplicity we'll call him the general, who has just joined the army of some Feudal Chinese lord who, we are led to believe, is a good bloke. The general wants to assist the lord in unifying China for the benefit of all its people.

Fast forward about an hour and you'll find the general, who turns out to be one hell of a martial artist (where he got his sick skills from remains a mystery), has won a great victory and returns to his village amid much celebration. There he meets a woman with whom he shares a brief but very deep and meaningful experience. She gives him a lamp to remember her buy, and he leaves to be made one of the five tiger generals.

Fast forward another half hour or so and its thirty years later. The other four tiger generals are dead, and China remains un-unified. The general asks the Prime Minister (an old friend) whether he can lead one more expedition into the unconquered north. The prime minister suggests that this would be unwise - "this is the time of life when we retire into comfort and remember our greatest triumphs  and the things we won on the battlefield". The general is persistant though, and pleads for the resources for one more expedition - "to reclaim all those things I have lost on the battlefield."

We see a montage of the things the general has had to sacrifice for his unification project, especially his relationship with the young woman thirty years earlier. His wish is granted, and he dies a glorious death during the ensuing military endeavour.

I was really struck by the montage of all the things the general has sacrificed for his dream. What was particularly strong in these scenes was the image of a map that he had since his youth, which when we first encounter it in the early stages of the movie is clean and empty, but which at the end has a large oval drawn on it which shows all the land now unified under the one benevolent ruler. What is implied is that the project that has been driving the general all his life is incomplete, and he knows he will die before he sees its ultimate success. He recognises all the sacrifices he has made for this impossible dream, and yet, he is not sad, and just keeps on at it, and when he dies, with, in a sense, nothing to show for it, he seems quite content.

So what am I getting at here? First off that old tired expression "its the journey that counts more than the destination", but here expressed in a more existential way. The general's life and the suffering inherent in his struggle - the deaths of his friends and fellow soldiers, the love and village he left behind, the lord whom he outlived - are given meaning by this grand project of unifying China under a benevolent ruler, and yet, he never achieves his goal. He is nonetheless, not regretful. He believes in the dream, and he is content to chase after it with his final movements. Importantly, the completion of the entire project does not seem important in the end to the wholesomeness of the general's life. If he had achieved it he could  rest, but this doesn't seem important. It is important to note that while the project is not a success, it doesn't fail either.

This is something of an insight into the existentialist system. A project gives one's life a purpose, meaning to suffering, until it is complete, or fails. It seems worthwhile then, to aim high - to set a goal that is very far off and difficult to obtain, but which can be seen to be in the process of achievement through increments e.g. this area was conquered and now this, and so we move ever closer to total unification. A problem arises when a project falls down, such as when we might have a goal for just one year - like achieving a first class honours for example - and fail in our quest. I am going to write another article about projects that fail, because such incidents strike me as amongst the most existentially difficult to deal with.

One other idea that this movie brought to me was that if the project stays with you until your death, then in the final moments you won't have time for regret, you will surely feel that you lived your life the way you wanted. Your reasons will remain good and you will have no need to regret them provided you have achieved a measure of success.

Overall, Three Kingdoms is a film worth watching. Good fight sequences, a surprisingly deep allegory, some vague relation to Chinese history, and Maggie Q (who is a bit of alright - for the ladies I hear the male lead is not bad either; Sammo Hung is also in residence if you have a Santa Claus fetish). Go check it out.