A Touch of Zen · reception & legacy
1970 · King Hu
How A Touch of Zen has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A commercial flop on first release in Taiwan — the distributor even chopped it into two parts — it was vindicated at Cannes in 1975 with a technical prize, becoming the first Chinese-language film honoured there. Now it's routinely called the greatest wuxia film ever made.
What's debated
The eternal fan debate: is the three-hour runtime and abrupt, mystical final stretch transcendent or a test of patience — 'slow cinema disguised as a martial arts movie' cuts both ways.
Its footprint
The bamboo forest duel is one of the most imitated sequences in cinema — Ang Lee's bamboo fight in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a direct homage, and its DNA runs through House of Flying Daggers and decades of wuxia since.
Where it stands
A 'you must have seen this' pillar of the wuxia canon and a Letterboxd darling since the 2015 restoration and Criterion release brought it roaring back.