Hero

Um pouco pra desafogar as mágoas da eleição fracassada, um pouco porque faz anos que eu queria ver esse filme, Herói, do Zhang Yimou. (Agora falta assistir Zatoichi do Kitano, Garota Estratosfera e Steamboy, e vou sair da Mostra de olhinho puxado)


Puuuuuuuuuuta que o pariu. O filme é lindo, tresbundante, perfeito. Quer dizer, pelo visto não pra fãs de wu xia, mas eu achei lindo. Relevando a patriotada do "Tien Sha - Nossa Terra," o filme é maravilhoso. As cores que são usadas nos outros filmes dele são muito mais in-your-face, sem nenhuma sutileza, e belíssimas. A luta entre a Maggie Cheung e a Zhang Zyiy no meio das amoreiras, a hora em que os dois defletem as flechas no telhado, os chapéus dos conselheiros de Qin, o Go que Céu joga no meio da chuva, a música, TODAS as cenas na biblioteca (eu quero uma biblioteca escrita em caracteres chineses arcaicos...)

Pra que esta não seja apenas e exclusivamente uma sessão baba ovo, a crônica do Borges sobre Zheng, último rei de Qin, que o herói sem nome se recusa a matar, está no Otras Inquisiciones, com o nome de "La Muralla y los Libros." Ele reinou como Qin Shih Huangdi, o Primeiro Imperador, queimou todos os livros e aqueles que os escreviam, construiu a primeira versão da Grande Muralha (uns 200Km distante da atual, que data da dinastia Ming), e foi lembrado por séculos pela crueldade. A dinastia de Qin praticamente acabou com ele, que procurava o elixir da vida eterna, e o seu filho já foi deposto.

Mais interessante, do ponto de vista de quem assiste Hero (e sabe quem financiou o filme), é a historiografia do que a história. Do artigo na Wikipedia :





In traditional Chinese historiography, Qin Shi Huangdi was almost always portrayed as a brutal tyrant, superstitious (a result of his interest in immortality and assassination paranoia) and even as a mediocre ruler. Ideological prejudices against the Legalist kingdom of Qin were established as early as 266 BC, when Confucian philosopher Xun Zi compared it to barbarian tribes and wrote "Qin has the heart of a tiger or a wolf … [and is] avaricious, perverse, eager for profit, and without sincerity" Later Confucian historians condemned the emperor who had burned the classics and buried Confucian scholars alive. They eventually compiled the list of the "Ten Crimes of Qin" to highlight his tyrannical actions. The famous Han poet and statesman Jia Yi concluded his essay The Faults of Qin with what was to become the standard Confucian judgement of the reasons for Qin's collapse. Jia Yi's essay, admired as a masterpiece of rhetoric and reasoning, was copied into two great Han histories and has had a far-reaching influence on Chinese political thought as a classic illustration of Confucian theory. He explained the ultimate weakness of Qin as a result of its ruler's ruthless pursuit of power, the precise factor which had made it so powerful; for as Confucius had taught, the strength of a government ultimately is based on the support of the people and virtuous conduct of the ruler.

This Confucian bias on the part of Han scholars rendered some of the stories recorded about the First Emperor in the Han period to be of doubtful historical value and many were probably invented to emphasize his negative traits. For instance, the accusation that the First Emperor had 460 scholars executed by having them buried with only their heads above ground, and then decapitated is at the very least unlikely to be completely true and it is probable that the incident was fabricated to create a legend of Confucian martyrdom. There are also many varying tales of Heaven's anger against Qin Shi Huangdi, such as the story of a stone fallen from the sky engraved with words denouncing the emperor and prophesying the collapse of his empire after his death. Almost all of these have been discredited as hearsay and legend. Other stories are designed to tarnish the First Emperor's image.

Only in modern times were historians able to penetrate beyond the limitations of traditional Chinese historiography. The political rejection of the Confucian tradition as an impediment to China's entry into the modern world opened the way for changing perspectives to emerge. In the three decades between the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the outbreak of the Second World War, with the deepening dissatisfaction with China's weakness and disunity, there emerged a new appreciation of the man who had unified China. In the time when he was writing, when Chinese territory was encroached upon by foreign nations, leading Nationalist historian Xiao Yishan emphasized the role of the First Emperor in repulsing the northern barbarians, particularly in the construction of the Great Wall. Another historian, Ma Feibai, published in 1941 a full-length revisionist biography of the First Emperor entitled Qin Shi Huangdi Zhuan, whom he called one of the great heroes of Chinese history. Ma compared him with the contemporary leader Chiang Kai-shek and saw many parallels in the careers and policies of the two men, both of whom he admired. Chiang's Northern Expedition of the early 1920s, which directly preceded the new Nationalist government at Nanking was compared to the unification brought about by Qin Shi Huangdi.

With the coming of the Communist Revolution in 1949, new interpretations again surfaced. The establishment of the new, revolutionary regime meant another re-evaluation of the First Emperor, this time following Marxist theory. The interpretation given of Qin Shi Huangdi of the new era was generally a combination of traditional and modern views, but essentially critical. This is exemplified in General History of China, which was compiled in September, 1955, as an official survey of Chinese history. The work described the First Emperor's major steps toward unification and standardisation as corresponding to the interests of the ruling group and the merchant class, not the nation or the people, and the subsequent fall of his dynasty a manifestation of the class struggle. The perennial debate of the fall of the Qin Dynasty was also explained in Marxist terms, the peasant rebellions being a revolt against oppression - a revolt which undermined the dynasty, but which was bound to fail because of a compromise with "landlord class elements" .

Since 1972, however, a radically different official view of the First Emperor has been given prominence throughout China. The reevaluation movement was launched by Hong Shidi's biography Qin Shi Huang, published by the state press to be a mass popular history, and sold 1.85 million copies within two years. In the new era the First Emperor was seen as a farsighted ruler who destroyed the forces of division and established the first unified, centralised state in Chinese history by rejecting the past. Personal attributes, such as his quest for immortality, so emphasized in traditional historiography, are scarcely mentioned. The new evaluations described how, in his time (an era of great political and social change), he had no compunctions in using violent methods to crush counter-revolutionaries, such as the "industrial and commercial slave owner" chancellor Lü Buwei. Unfortunately, he was not as thorough as he should have been and after his death, hidden subversives, under the leadership of the chief eunuch Zhao Gao, seized power and used it to restore the old feudal order. To round out this reevaluation, a new interpretation of the precipitous collapse of the Qin Dynasty was put forward in an article entitled "On the Class Struggle During the Period Between Ch'in and Han" by Luo Siding, in a 1974 issue of Red Flag, to replace the old explanation. The new theory claimed that the cause of the fall of Qin lay in the lack of thoroughness of Qin Shi Huangdi's "dictatorship over the reactionaries, even to the extent of permitting them to worm their way into organs of political authority and usurp important posts."